Naruto's Advice
by atom-of-ice
Summary: Several days after becoming a team Sakura is depressed by another of Sasuke’s rejections and turns to Naruto expecting to be uplifted by his crush. What she gets instead may change her whole outlook on life and her purpose in it.
1. Introduction Forward

Naruto's advice Disclaimer and warnings:

Summary: Sakura is depressed by another of Sasuke's rejections and turns to Naruto expecting to be uplifted by his crush. What she gets instead may change her whole outlook on life and her purpose in it. This is just a couple days after becoming a team. I'm assuming you have some background knowledge of the series.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or any of the associated characters. I may or may not own any jutsu that I come up with but as I doubt I'll make any money off them just tell me if you use em. I also do not own Bleach but some of the concepts I'm using will come from there. I'm sorry about any spoilers from anything but that's the risk of reading fanfiction.

Helpful: the map I'm using. .com/art/Naruto-Map-65093228 Probably not exact but you get the idea.

A/N: this started as a one-shot Naruto/Sakura kinky smex thing and it grew quickly out of proportion in my attempts to put in a proper lead-in. Don't worry if that's not what you're looking for; there will be kinky, likely borderline disturbing smex just be patient. It's starting to look like a harem fic and if you don't like those things I'm sorry but too bad there are just too many good reasons for Naruto to end up with all the girls. I'll try to keep it down to three or four but we'll see how it goes. Like I said, this had grown like a population of rabid bunnies on speed and they are all currently cannibalizing my muse. And with that amazing visual on with some warnings:

users:

This story will have multiple instances of graphic violence and occasionally there will be kinky or possible offensive styles of sex. **That is why it's rated M! **If you cannot handle that, then you shouldn't be reading my work. Precedence has been set by my other stories here on . I like this site because it's easier for me to use than and it doesn't often screw up my stories. If this gets pulled off this site I won't be editing the content and reposting it like I've seen some other authors doing. I'll try to post it on too but as I said I don't like the way they post so… there you have it. Even though it sounds cliché it really is about personal responsibility. If you get offended by iffy subject matter than you should start looking at stories that are rated lower. It isn't the responsibility of the site to monitor what is being posted so they don't offend anyone. They can't be responsible for the thousands of people posting and to do so would totally destroy the spirit of the site. If they started telling us what to post it wouldn't be original or author driven. This is about creativity and creating something unique and entertaining, that comes in all forms and if you don't like a form of it don't read it.

Sorry about that rant but it gets on my nerves to see stories I like taken down and the authors give up on them because someone blabbed to the site manager and bitched enough to get it taken down. The "report story abuse" button should be changed to "report plagiarism" because that _is_ a serious problem that site managers should look into. Obviously people writing about sex and marking it 'T for teen' notwithstanding.

**Atom-of-Ice's writing key:**

"speech"

_Thoughts_

_**Inner-Sakura/Kyuubi thoughts**_

"**Summons/Kyuubi talking"**

-- break -- drastic change of scene or time (basically where nothing important happens, like sleeping or walking)

-- perspective change from one character to another without an accompanying scene change

_-flashback-_ will denote a flashback… surprise. The entire flashback will be in italics to help separate it from the current time

I'll try to put in my Japanese technique translations but if I miss some and you can't figure them out from the story context please review and tell me so. Thanks


	2. Chapter 1

**Naruto's Advice**

Begin Story --

Sakura was enraged. She had been rejected by Sasuke-kun again and somehow it was all Naruto's fault. _**Shannaro! It's definitely Naruto's fault!**_ With inner-Sakura's voice and encouragement ringing and echoing in her head she stomped off in search of Naruto with repeats of what had happened to her racing around her head.

_-Flashback-_

_It had quickly become apparent to all three new genin's that Kakashi was always going to be late and if they weren't going to succumb to insanity or delusions to pass the time it would become necessary to bring something to do. Of course this didn't mean that they didn't occasionally go without their sundries of entertainment._

_Sasuke had long since decided that his time was best spent either studying scrolls from the Uchiha library or devising ways of killing his brother. Today was a plotting day, well it wasn't that he scheduled the days he plotted or the days he studied, rather he was stuck on a particularly hard concept in how he needed to mold his chakra to better execute his favorite fire jutsu: __Katon: Housenka no Jutsu__ he didn't quite understand how to get his chakra to form the far more potent fire elemental chakra. Thus as he was stuck in his mastery of his jutsu and had no one to ask about it, until Kakashi-sensei got here there was nothing wrong with imagining Itachi's face being melted off after being hit by a white-hot fireball._

_Sakura had decided, much in the same way she always decided, that this time was best spent pestering Sasuke for a date after whatever crappy D-rank mission they had was done._

"_Sasuke-kun, do you want to go get something to eat when we're done with the mission?"_

"_Hn, no." _Why does she keep asking? Can't she see I'm thinking about my revenge? I am an Avenger I have no time for dates. _Par for course Sakura was rejected and crushed again. Thankfully the human mind is amazing and in the face of something it cannot accept it frequently disregards the experience or data that brought about the unpleasant realization. Unfortunately something that was probably an evolutionary trick to shrug off horrible trauma such as rape or severe beatings was now working in favor of Sakura's blind crush on the Uchiha survivor._

_Naruto was an enigma as he was wont to be. Today he was reading Bleach, but not just for entertainment. Naruto had long discovered that the holes in his shinobi education tended to let him do things that either were thought impossible or were far more advanced than he could be reasonably expected to know. Point in case was his henge. A henge is a genjutsu technique, i.e. it is an illusion, the most skilled illusionists will take into account everything that might give such an illusion away, such as making sure footprints in the dust are the same size as the illusion's footprints and other such small and inconsequential details which will alert the subconscious to a trick, make the user feel suspicious to others and thus encourage them break the illusion. When it was explained to Naruto, before he was kicked out of the classroom for something ridiculous, the teacher had said that the henge was used to disguise a shinobi by taking the form of another person or thing. With only these vague clues and a basic understanding of chakra and a pathetic misunderstanding of how to correctly mold it for illusions Naruto created a new version on the henge wherein he actually takes the form of the object or person right down to an approximation of the person or living being's chakra circulatory system (He retains a chakra system as a henged object too but as no inanimate objects have chakra systems his coils shuffle around to where he thinks they should go.). As such ignorance led to what the Sandaime considered an S-rank technique (bet you all just thought it was because he's a pervert) Naruto was reluctant to put too much effort into correcting his misunderstandings of chakra._

_Where this relates to him reading Bleach was the characters special abilities. He thought that having a sword that could change form to become more powerful while hiding the true capabilities behind a normal or even crappy looking exterior was really cool and appealed to his prankster nature. He was still looking into doing something similar to a tanto that one of his attackers had accidentally left behind after stabbing him. But what he was looking into today was several peculiarities about his favorite character, Zaraki Kenpachi. The first and most immediately useful was the invulnerable technique that he used in his first fight with Ichigo. As Naruto understood it all he would have to do was to cover himself in a chakra shell dense enough to stop all but the most powerful and most precisely directed of techniques and chakra augmented weapons. The other and possibility and potentially most useful for sneaking and training was the eye patch Zaraki wore that suppressed his spiritual pressure, or in Naruto's case would be chakra._

_Naruto had made up his mind a couple days ago to emulate Zaraki as the character struck fear into the other characters and seemed to be deeply respected for his abilities though not ostracized due to fearsome reputation. Thus Naruto was rereading all of his, admittedly small, collection of Bleach manga that contained Zaraki Kenpachi and his abilities. And while Naruto didn't want to be feared he did want to be respected and being a powerful ninja with unique techniques seemed like the best way to do that._

_It wasn't too long until Kakashi showed up and they were off to catch the cat again._

_-End Flashback-_

Sakura resumed her search for Naruto trying to think of where exactly he could possibly be. She hadn't thought that knowing nothing about her teammate would so sorely limit her dealing out judgment for his existing to separate her and her precious Sasuke-kun. She knew that he said his hobbies were eating ramen and training but she had already checked their usual training ground and other than a couple of sword wielding ninja who seemed to be attacking each other's clothing exclusively there had been no one there. She had also already been past the two ramen places she knew of in town, one was a tiny hole in the wall on the outskirts of the market district an Ichi-something, the other was near the Hokage tower along with several other quick food places presumably sprung up to feed the masses of administration personnel who seemed to be imprisoned in the arguably most important building in town.

She was now searching the other training grounds open to genin while ignoring the chunin, jonin, and skill specific training grounds. She didn't think that the class dobe would have a specialization and thus there would be no need to check the training grounds that catered to particular skills or jutsu types.

She was starting to get fed up with this, after all how hard could it possibly be to find someone wearing bright orange. She was nearing the last training ground for genin, a small bamboo forest with several clearings and small ponds rumored to be excellent for the various chakra control exercises that jonin-sensei's were supposed to teach before their charges reached chunin.

As she looked around she realized that this was a really peaceful spot and as such Naruto was almost certainly not here. The only person here looked to be a couple years older than her and was dressed in a horribly clichéd ninja outfit that looked to be a knockoff of a cartoon's design. He had on some black baggy pants that probably stopped around mid shin but were wrapped to his shins with black wrappings that if her eyes weren't playing tricks on here seemed to shine slightly when the spotty light hit them right. The pants themselves had no pockets but both thighs had kunai holsters strapped to them, white bandages taking up the slack in the pants so it wouldn't get in the way when reaching for one of the all-purpose knives. He was wearing an actual belt which half surprised her as she was honestly expecting a sash from how the overall picture looked. The belt was festooned with scroll pockets and equipment pouches. Her eyes trailed higher still and took in the black top that almost looked like a tucked in martial arts gi. The arms of the shirt were wrapped to the elbow with more of the same black wrappings that seemed to shine but unusually the hands were bare of any covering, usually when ninja wrapped their forearms they included their hands or at least substituted gloves or ANBU style gauntlets thus protecting the hands. He seemed very intent upon the scroll he was reading and a brush and ink set was set off to the side of where he was sitting along with some paper strips which reminded her of the various seal tags ninja regularly used. She had only an inkling of his expression as he was wearing a mask very similar to Kakashi-sensei's but from the focused look in his blue eyes whatever was on that scroll was really difficult or important or both. All in all he was a very professional looking ninja once you looked closer than the general picture. That is… until she looked at his hair.

His hair was a very yellow blonde with tall, thick, triangular spikes haphazardly dispersed throughout, this, while being a fairly impractical color for someone who is supposed to be hiding in the shadows, was not what made it ridiculous. At the tip of a dozen and a half of the tallest spikes were _bells_. What absolutely _retarded_ ninja puts _bells_ in their hair? Granted she hadn't noticed their slight noise earlier but now she heard every time he turned his head was a soft jingling. She supposed that there was just something off about every ninja she'd ever met, except for her precious Sasuke-kun of course.

Shaking her head she was about to turn around and just give up on finding Naruto when the ninja spoke up.

"See anything you like Sakura-chan?" _No, that couldn't possibly be Naruto! __**Well who else do you suppose would put bells in their hair?**__ But there is no way that is Naruto look at him! He's actually handsome and serious looking and not wearing _orange_!_ Sakura was understandably having a hard time reconciling the differences in her teammate after all with the exception of his hair this could be a real good ninja. No doubt Sakura would have stood there for much longer with her mouth hanging open trying to process this new version of Naruto had he not decided to get a second opinion on his current project.

"Ne, Sakura-chan? Do you know anything at all about chakra suppression seals?" Finally there was something normal she could latch on to some simple information regurgitation.

"Yeah, a little. They use them on shinobi prisoners, usually inscribed on special restraints that prevent any attempts to use taijutsu or escape. There are several different kinds that are classified based on their use and the chakra levels of the ninja in question. There is the kind that totally suppresses a set amount of chakra, but you have to be careful you don't kill your prisoner by suppressing the chakra they need to live. There is the kind that suppresses a set percentage of the target's chakra, which are usually used for short term transfers or ninjutsu specialists because as their total chakra pool increases via minor chakra exercises there is more for them to use total so it only works for cutting down the really big techniques that a ninja could use to take out a bunch of his captors before being taken down. There is also the kind that doesn't suppress chakra at all but rather randomly effects the ninja's control, which they use on genjutsu specialists as it is impractical to seal off so much chakra when they are capable of using only the tiniest of surplus to devastating results. But why do you care? Are you so afraid you're going to get captured on a mission you think you have to know about them? Of course a dobe like you would get captured! Maybe if you started being really nice to Sasuke-kun he'd make sure you wouldn't."

Sakura was beaming at her dig at Naruto and her praise for Sasuke. Surely Sasuke would reward her with a date for picking on Naruto.

"I know all that, I meant do you know anything about the mechanics of the seals! And Sasuke-teme wouldn't lift a finger to save me even if I turned into a girl and was carrying his child! If you haven't noticed the teme doesn't like anyone but himself. You are better off dating one of these shafts of bamboo, their much more attentive and you could probably derive a lot more sexual satisfaction from rubbing up against them than you would ever get from Sasuke." This said Naruto prepared to turn back to his scroll.

With an incoherent scream of rage and a blush of epic proportions Sakura slammed her fist down on the top of Naruto's bell adorned head. She then promptly wished that she hadn't as Naruto disappeared in a poof of smoke revealing the partially shattered log left after a kawarimi. Sakura's rage filled yell instantly swapped rage for the acute pain of a fist that had just been perforated with a plethora of wood shards. She dropped to her knees cradling her hand and totally missed Naruto walking back into the clearing with a look of barely constrained rage.

"WHAT THE HELL SAKURA?! I AM YOUR TEAMMATE! YOU _**CANNOT**_ ATTACK YOUR TEAMMATES! BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY I'M TIRED OF BEING HIT SO I'LL TELL YOU RIGHT NOW THAT THE NEXT TIME YOU PULL THIS SHIT THAT LOG WILL HAVE AN EXPLOSIVE NOTE PLANTED ON IT AND I WILL GLADLY GO TO JAIL FOR CLEANING UP THE GENE POOL!"

Sakura was totally silent and now metaphorically ass over top. Naruto had _never_ yelled at her before. She didn't know what to think now. She'd never considered what would happen in he ever got fed up with the treatment. She'd just assumed that because of his obvious crush that she would be able to do anything to him to relieve her stress at being rejected or not being good enough or just when she had a bad day, but he wouldn't ever say or do anything to her. She was amazed that he'd managed a kawarimi with no handseals and only the smallest of warnings, but this took a far backseat to the fact that he had yelled at her and his normally kind and happy eyes were dark and flashing with rage, for a second she even thought the pupils had become slits. Her mind for the first time in a long time was utterly blank, she simply could not process all the new things that surrounded Naruto and had shut down. It was slowly starting to reconstruct a new image of Naruto that her subconscious thought might make her less likely to be killed by the formerly deliriously happy blonde.

Naruto resumed his seat with his back to several bamboo stalks and picked up his scroll once more ignoring the shivering, staring and stationary kunoichi. He'd just about cracked the heavy theory on the percentage based seal and if he was correct then it wasn't unreasonable to assume his chakra control would jump without the overwhelming pressure of his already expansive reserves. He supposed he should be grateful to the Kyuubi for that at least as there was just about no way that anyone, short of having an advanced bloodline, would have upper level jonin reserves as a fresh-from-the-academy genin. The problem that he found with his overwhelming chakra reservoir was that he had almost no control when he wasn't using lots of chakra. Even when he was using lots of chakra his control still sucked, he could just count on the fact that chakra heavy techniques usually had all the subtlety of using a katana as a scalpel and he could rely on his ability to overpower them without them collapsing. His instructors might be surprised to learn that the only reason he did kawarimi without handseals was that it generally took more chakra and was thus more likely to work even when overpowered. This realization would, he suspected, be followed by the insulting vindication that they'd known Naruto couldn't do anything right and so Naruto was in no mood or hurry to inform them.

Now it was time for a test run. Naruto reached over for the ink, brush, and tags and started drawing the basic chakra repression tag noted in the scroll he'd been reading to cut the chakra available to the targeted ninja by half.

Naruto was done with his tag and just waiting for it to dry by the time Sakura's brain finally reengaged. Her much praised intelligence was now coming to the fore to attempt to make more sense of this new version of Naruto. Given her shock, she could be forgiven for not choosing the most tactful way of going about it. But like everything she had ever learned, she decided to start with the basics or in this case the most glaringly obvious. The fact that she was a girl had very little to do with her choosing to ask about his new outfit first… or that's what she told herself later when she thought back on it.

"Um, Naruto? What's with the new outfit? Why aren't you wearing orange? What's in the scroll? Why do you act so dumb around everyone when you seem to have it together now? And for Kami's sake what is with the _bells_?" Sakura found that once the first question came out the rest seemed to flow without limit or sign of stopping. She may have continued but she had run out of breath and in her pause she found Naruto's eyes locked with hers.

"Why do you care Sakura? I thought I was just a dobe. Surely you aren't going to act like a ninja now, so late in the game?" His sarcasm was oozing from his scathing questions and Sakura wondered if perhaps her perpetual need to know everything might just get her very severely injured this time.

"Well I… um… well we're teammates now and now that I've seen you there is obviously more to you than I thought so maybe you could tell me a little about it?" _**Yeah! Tell us why you're suddenly different.**_Sakura hoped her half truth might garner her some explanations.

"Well Sakura if you want something it's always good to have something of equal value to trade for it. So since you want information I suppose you must have something, or can get something for me in return. That's fair right?"

"Well I suppose…"

"Great! Ask away but remember before I answer I'm going to tell you what I'm going to need in return. If you aren't prepared to make a deal then there's really no reason for you to ask any questions."

"Alright, why did you change your outfit?"

"That is a freebie because we are teammates after all; I changed my outfit to be more professional and to do my job better."

"What is in the scroll and why are you interested in suppression seals?"

"That is two questions but thankfully they're related, so in return I need you to get me a different scroll on beginning sealing techniques. Do you promise to bring it to our meeting place tomorrow?"

"Sure I can do that, but why can't you?"

"Remember every time you ask a question I get something in return do you really want me to answer that? And in regards to your earlier question I plan to put a suppression seal on myself that I can easily remove to help with training and to have an ace in the hole so to speak. This scroll shows how to inscribe those seals but doesn't tell you the why's behind it. It just shows you the form of the seal and tells you what to alter to get different percentages."

"No you don't have to answer that. What's up with the bells in your hair? Why do you want another scroll on seals?"

"To answer those I'll need your solemn promise to never tell anyone about what we talk about here. You can't even tell Sasuke-teme."

"Alright I won't tell, but how am I going to explain getting you a scroll for sealing tomorrow?"

"Don't tell them anything if they don't ask; if they do ask, say that I asked you for it and you don't know why I need it. The bells in my hair are going to make many things that I do harder. It's gonna be harder to be stealthy and it's gonna be easier to predict my movements when I'm sparring. The only way to get around the sparring is to move faster than anyone can react to the bells. Think of it as a really good reason to get loads faster. The next sealing scroll is like that I've heard about chakra weights that use a seal to make them heavier when you add chakra to them to increase the weight. That's good because I can use the weights to get faster and stronger but they won't be really bulky like some weights can be. But really, there's so many other things I've heard you can do with seals that relate to training so I'm trying to make one that will make it really hard to move so that I'll get much faster and much stronger much quicker. That type of resistance would mean I would be stronger everywhere instead of just where I put weights."

Sakura took some time think about all the changes in Naruto and was still having trouble with it so she decided to ask one more question and be done with this. Besides she still had to clean and bandage up her hand.

"Why do you seem so much smarter now than you were in the Academy?" Naruto seemed to ponder how to answer this or maybe, Sakura reflected, he was trying to come up with something of equal value to ask her. So far she honestly thought she'd gotten the better deal, just one minor chore and she already knew much more about her teammate who was progressively becoming more interesting.

"I want your promise that you will come back here tomorrow evening so I can explain something I wanna try with you." Sakura thought about it. There really wasn't much she was going to do tomorrow so there was no reason she couldn't and if it turned out to be something she didn't want to do she could just leave.

"Sure I'll come back but I'm gonna leave if I think you're up to something bad."

"All I ask is that you show up. The reason I seem much smarter is because I learned a couple of the shinobi codes long before I started the Academy. The first is 'a shinobi moves in the shadows and cloaks himself in deception'. If everyone thinks I'm stupid and weak then nobody is going to take me seriously and I'll always have an advantage 'cause they let their guard down. Sakura, you don't have to answer this, in fact I don't think you should right now, but what was your original reason for becoming a kunoichi? What is your reason for being one now? I don't care too much what those reasons are or were but please be honest with yourself and try to remember shinobi and kunoichi are trained ultimately to kill other people. I guess what I'm trying to ask is 'are your reasons for being a kunoichi strong enough to kill for?' cause if their not maybe you should quit before you get in too deep."

Sakura was stunned again. That was happening disturbingly often around the blonde baka and even inner-Sakura was strangely silent in the face of these thoughts. She didn't even realize that she had turned and left until she was standing in the doorway of her house and her kaasan was asking how her team meeting went. She absently replied as she removed her shinobi sandals; tangentially, she remembered that Naruto had switched out those too; he'd been wearing wooden geta.

Sakura looked around herself and for the first time in a long time she really _looked._ Her house wasn't huge, probably average, middle-class really. This was understandable as her tousan was a middle class merchant from a clan of merchants of varying success. Her kaasan worked as an administrator directly under her ojiisan who held a seat on the council that helped the Hokage run Konoha. What was her original reason for wanting to become a kunoichi? She knew it wasn't Sasuke; she hadn't even met him until she'd joined the academy and after she met Ino. Sakura was sure that there was a reason. Non-shinobi families never went to the academy unless they had a good reason; after all, civilians usually were a part of a particular class that determined with a fair about of certainty what one would be doing with the rest of their lives. The Haruno's were a part of the prosperous merchant class so her reasons couldn't be that she wanted to escape a harsh or untenable lifestyle.

Now she remembered. She had just been mercilessly teased about her the size of her forehead and had run away when she'd over heard a conversation between her ojiisan and her kaasan.

_-Flashback-_

_Sakura raced through the halls of her home in her new pink kimono. Tears were streaming from her jade eyes and her pink ponytail was coming undone. She didn't care where she went; she just had to get away from her cousins. Wasn't it enough that she got teased at the playground for her strange hair color? Now she had to deal with her girl cousins who had similarly strange shades of hair making fun of her forehead._

_Suddenly she tripped up on the edge of her kimono and went sprawling on the floor. Just when she was about to give up and wail until someone came to comfort her she heard voices behind the sliding door she was next to. She recognized her ojiisan's heated tone like when someone did something really, really bad. She crawled over to the door and tried to understand as much as a six-year-old could possibly gather from the ranting going on._

"…_so tired of the shinobi clans getting all the respect! They could not do what they do without us here to stabilize the economy or provide for them. Worse though has to be the Hokage's ridiculous love for that demon brat! The civilians were trying once again to get him to execute that abomination and he still refuses. If we were to get more support we could overrule him but it comes down to the damn shinobi clans again. The Nara, Inuzuka, Aburame, Morino, Yamanaka, and Gekko clans still refuse to see the boy as a demon! If I have to hear one more time about the Yondaime's last wish to see him as a hero I'm going to puke! If we were given as much credit…"_

_Sakura didn't know about any demons but if these ninja were so respected then if she were one nobody would dare make fun of her again! That's what she would do! She was going to go tell her tousan that she wanted to be a ninja._

_-end flashback-_

Sakura stopped dead in the hall way to her room. Was that the only reason she had wanted to be a kunoichi? She had just wanted to stop people making fun of her? Sure the reason still applied, she did still want respect after all but was she willing to kill for it? Suddenly she hated Naruto for making her take this seriously. If he hadn't looked her in the eye that seriously and changed so much while he was asking her not to lie to herself she wouldn't be doubting herself. Well just because she started for a petty reason didn't mean she wasn't cut out for it. She just had to figure out why she was doing it now and then when she did she could rub it in his smug whiskered, masked face. _Wait, why is it important to prove anything to Naruto? Why do I feel like I have to have a reason he'd accept? __**It doesn't matter, we'll find a reason and then he won't be able to make us doubt ourselves anymore, Cha!**__ Yeah, we'll find a reason and then we can prove our reason is better than his!_

Now the trick, she supposed, was to find what her reason was. She knew right away that most of why she kept at it was to impress Sasuke-kun, but somehow she didn't think that would be a good reason to tell Naruto if she wanted to rub it in his face. Besides as hot as he was she wasn't sure she could kill someone for Sasuke.

Sakura resumed her walk to her room. If she had known that her ototo had been watching her expressions she might have known why he'd avoided her the rest of the night in the not so slight fear that she was on her period and someone had pissed her off.

After she'd eaten and gone to bed, Sakura stayed up late tossing and turning and puzzling out reasons to continue on as a kunoichi.

-- break —

It was 5:30 in the morning when Sakura jerked awake yelling.

"Family! My Family! That's why!" Sakura smiled smugly as she now had a totally acceptable reason to be a ninja. She was a ninja to protect her family and she would face down the enemies of Konoha knowing that often leaving them alive wouldn't be an option. Realizing that it was still exceptionally dark out to be 7:30 in the morning like when she usually woke up she jerked her head around to see what time it was.

"Five-thirty!?" Sakura's voice dropped to a harsh whisper so to not awaken the rest of the household. _This is ridiculous; I'm never up this early. __***yawn* remember you have to get the baka the sealing scroll.**__ Shit, that's right. Where am I supposed to get a scroll explaining basic sealing?_ As she pondered where she would acquire the scroll which she wasn't sure she would get back, her body began its daily routine of gathering up her ninja outfit and heading to the bathroom.

The hot shower woke her nicely for the day and soon she was cramming down a breakfast bar and heading out the door totally disregarding that it was only 6:30 at the latest and there were certainly no businesses open at this hour.

When the only activity was the restaurant owners starting to prepare to open for breakfast, walking though the market district while nothing was open was a very different experience. She decided that her best bet was to find the earliest opening shinobi shop and ask if they either had such a scroll for sale or where she could find one if they didn't. Looking around she decided that since the most basic of the fuuinjutsu arts was storing extra weapons into scrolls she would probably have the most luck at a weapons shop. Her decision made she settled herself on the steps of the Higurashi weapons shop to wait until the posted opening time of 8am.

"Are you stocking up for a mission you have to get to or are you just waiting for someone?" Sakura practically jumped out of her skin startled by the person questioning her from behind. She wiped her head around to see a girl with brown hair in two buns standing in the door to the shop. Sakura remembered her from the class a year before her, there were times when her class was watched by other classes when their usual teacher was sick or had something important come up.

"Er, no, nothing really important. I was just up really early and remembered that I made a promise to my teammate that I would get him a scroll about sealing. I just figured that since so many people use seals to store extra weapons that a place that sells weapons might sell the stuff needed to seal them."

"Oh, yeah we've got scrolls that explain basic seals. We don't have anything really complicated just the beginners stuff. Like you said it's mostly just so people can learn how to seal their weapons. Come on in, I'll set you up with what you need and then you can get back to whatever was so important that you got up this early for."

"Thanks." Sakura followed her in staring at all the different weapons that the shop sold. She'd been in this shop before, in fact this was the shop she got all her kunai and shuriken at but she still marveled at the incredible number of tools available to the ninja profession. She was being led to the back of the store where the boxes of mass produced standard shuriken were and sure enough off to the side of those shelves was a small honeycomb-like scroll rack with various scrolls from sealing to basic weapon care even some scrolls on how to begin using various weapons. Sakura immediately narrowed her choices down to two scrolls. The first one was much like how Naruto described the scroll he had been using yesterday. It had lots of the various common seals all drawn out but not much by way of explanations besides explaining what that particular seal did and where it was safe to put it. The other was a lot of sealing theory but not much practical application. Basically it described the purpose of the various sealing methods and went a little into what one could theoretically accomplish using seals but only had some seals drawn out as examples. Growing frustrated at her inability to decide which one Naruto was looking for she just decided to get them both, she'd probably end up reading the theory-based one anyway and the other was very practical for her as she didn't imagine herself getting into fuuinjutsu.

Her decision made she went to the front of the store and used the credit line her tousan had set up for her to replace her equipment with. She bid Tenten goodbye, they had introduced themselves when she was checking out and Tenten had recognized her, but then how hard is it to recognize someone with pink hair.

Sakura began her journey over to where Team 7 would usually meet. When she got there it was no surprise to her that nobody else was there and she sat down and opened the scroll on Fuuinjutsu theory.

-- break –

Sakura was about an eighth done with the scroll and surprisingly interested in its contents when a shadow blocked her light. She looked up with every intention of telling whoever it was to back the hell off, when she realized that her impromptu shade was actually the person she needed to give the scroll to. She sheepishly rolled it up and was going to hand it to him when he stopped her.

"If it's all that interesting keep reading it I notice you've got two I can just skim the other one if it's for me too. Either way I've got other things to do till Kakashi-sensei gets here."

"Thanks, I'd like that. Yes the other scroll is for you too I wasn't sure what you were looking for so the one I'm reading is all theory and the other one is basically just a bunch of common seals that you can copy onto other stuff with little descriptions about what the seals do. This is actually surprisingly interesting I never knew you could do so much with just ink and paper and chakra. Did you know that the major setups of most written seals correspond to the 12 major handseals?"

"I didn't know that. I suspect that the scroll full of common seals will be much more useful once I know the theory behind them so I'll just wait till you finish or until the end of the day as you promised. I've got a book on intermediate chakra manipulation and chakra control exercises." Naruto walked over to the other side of the bridge bells jingling and pulled out a small but thick book not unlike the orange book Kakashi-sensei was known to read and opened it to his bookmark.

They waited for perhaps another fifteen minutes before Sasuke showed up and took his usual spot on the railing of the bridge and began brooding at still being unsuccessful in converting his chakra. He was thrown off slightly by Sakura's continued silence and intense study of the scroll she'd brought with her. The dobe also seemed to be highly interested in his book but it was probably another one of his stupid manga books.

The three waited in silence for another thirty minutes or so before Naruto closed his book and got up drawing the attention of his teammates. His new clothing was a shock for Sasuke and he made his opinion of it know with a soft snort of disgust probably in reference to the bells in Naruto's hair. Sakura still reeling from the revelations of yesterday wondered what he was about to do. She supposed it would have something to do with chakra control as that was what he said his book was about. She quickly glanced at Sasuke and was reassured that she should be interested because Sasuke himself was still interested in what the dobe was doing.

Naruto, blatantly ignoring his teammates, meandered his way over to a nearby tree and stared up it. The tree was rather unremarkable there were probably thousands just like it all across Konoha. He stared up into the branches for a minute or so before digging out his book once more as if consulting it to make sure that the tree was in fact a tree and that all was as it should be. He shrugged before putting the book back into the same equipment pouch on the back of his belt he'd taken it out of. Rummaging around in one of the kunai pouches on his thighs he dug out a kunai, putting it in his teeth he formed the ram handseal, the most basic handseal for gathering and molding chakra. Sakura and Sasuke watched intently as the telltale blue glow gathered on the bottom of his geta. Naruto then shattered all their assumptions about what was in the realm of possibilities by placing his foot on the tree trunk and calmly stepping up to bring his other foot onto the tree. He held this position for several seconds before moving his first foot up and beginning a calm walk up a vertical surface. He made it about four meters up the side of the tree before Sakura and Sasuke heard a slight creaking followed by a sharp crack and saw Naruto tossed back from the tree. His right hand flashed up to his mouth to grab the kunai which he immediately threw between where his feet had been. Naruto then executed an almost graceful back flip to land in a deep crouch about three meters from the tree.

His two teammates stared in shock. Being the more prepared of the two for such displays of abnormalities Sakura responded first.

"Sugoi! How do you do that Naruto?" Sasuke just grunted but if one were to look closely they would find him closely paying attention to Naruto's response.

"That's a chakra control exercise called tree climbing. Says here" Naruto digs out the book he was reading "that it's mid-genin level. It notes, however, that you use a running start when you first start practicing. I assume that's so you don't crack your head open if you can't get high enough to flip out safely. I dunno I just did it because it sounds really useful later don't you think? I mean, how many uses can you think of for the ability to walk up walls? I bet you could do this on ceilings too. Talk about trap avoidance, everyone is setting pressure traps for you to step on only for you to walk over them upside down. The jump in chakra control is just a bonus for me 'cause mine sucks. The great thing is that this has a little bit for everyone, Sakura-chan you have the opposite problem I do. You probably have amazing control, the downside being that you have an almost negligible chakra reservoir. I have this huge amount of chakra that I can't do a damn thing with. _*laughter*_ I guess what I'm saying is that this exercise will build your reservoir Sakura while it'll help me control mine."

Sakura just nodded at that. She looked towards her romantic interest to see if he was still paying attention. Seeing Sasuke still looking intently at Naruto she felt justified in asking how to do it.

"Well you have to concentrate chakra to the soles of your feet, which is the hardest place to do so or so I've read. You have to force the chakra to stick to the tree and then you have to hold your chakra to your feet. Push out too much chakra and you'll blow yourself off the tree, on the other side of that if you use too little you don't stick and just slide down the tree."

Naruto's hand went automatically to the back of his neck in a nervous gesture due to the focused attention of his teammates. He nearly fell over when Sasuke made his contribution to the conversation that didn't consist of a grunt or other snobbish bodily noise.

"What's the point of the kunai dobe?"

"Well you're never gonna know if your getting any better if you don't mark your progress. I stuck mine in the tree so I have to pause on my way up to pull it out. I think that will help me get used to doing other things while using the chakra to stick to the tree."

Unfortunately for the genin this was the time that Kakashi decided to show up with a mission to paint some civilian's fence.

-- break –

When Sakura arrived back in the bamboo grove Naruto was already studying his new Fuuinjutsu scroll. He looked up from his sprawled position to acknowledge Sakura's arrival. The bells in his hair had been jingling all day and Sakura had already associated them with training and missions. Dimly she worried that one day Naruto would take out the bells and she wouldn't know how to act.

"I'm here to fulfill my promise. What did you want to talk to me about?" Naruto grinned at her straight-to-business attitude.

"Well that actually depends a lot on you. Have you figured out your reason for being a ninja?"

"Yes I have. I'm a kunoichi so I can protect my family." At this he arched an eyebrow as if to say that he wasn't sure that was the only thing driving her. Sakura ducked her head feeling slightly guilty despite herself. "Well that and to get Sasuke-kun's attention, but I promise that the first reason is the most important one. Just because I didn't know it until last night doesn't make it any less valid! So don't you go giving me that look!"

"Fair enough. That's actually a better reason than most of the ones I've heard. I used to hang out with a bunch of ANBU and some of their reasons were rather pathetic to begin with. Make no mistake, they've got their shit together now, anyone that's been doing it as long or as hard as they have are sure to have iron-clad reasons to do what they do. But I remember one guy who made it to chunin just because his little sister said he couldn't do it. He had his priorities rearranged after his first kill in the second part of the exams, but you see what I mean about doing it for dumb reasons.

"Actually what I wanted tied in a little bit to the reason you implied when we were first introducing ourselves to each other when we got our team assignments. I have a deal to make with you, well a deal that's kinda fused with a bet. Here's the deal part: I want you to help me train after we're done with missions every day that you can stay after we're done. The fact is that you know more about the theories and book knowledge behind a lot of the things I'm trying to do. I've neither the time nor the inclination to look up everything I need to know so I want to be able to pick your brain so that even if you don't have an answer right away I'll at least know were to look so it won't take as long to find the answer. In return I train you as best I'm able and share all the relevant techniques you help me come up with. That's the deal part, essentially we're both training each other but we're making a commitment to it. The bet part is your incentive to agree to the deal.

"The bet is no less than Sasuke-teme's affections. This is how it works: I have a very special version of henge that I use that even the Sharingan can't see though. It's considered an S-class technique because the users body actually becomes that which your henging into. The idea is for you to construct what you think the teme's perfect girl is, then I transform into that and I get three tries to get a date from him just to prove that it can be done your way. If that can't be done I transform into what I think that the teme looks for in a girl and I get three more tries to get a date with him. If I get a date from him in the form that I designed you have to help me no questions asked and follow the deal till I release you from it. If I get a date from him in the form you designed I'll teach you three things of your choice and never bother you again if you don't want me to."

At the end of the description of the bet Sakura's jaw would have been on the ground should it been anatomically possible. _**Yes take the bet and when we win Sasuke will be ours for the taking after he teaches us his version of the henge! Cha true love conquers all! **__I dunno though what if we lose we'll be stuck doing all the things he wants us to do. __**This is a win/win situation girl if he wins you can just train to be what his design was like.**_ Sakura continued to think about where this would go wrong all the while inner-Sakura was nearly foaming at the mouth for this chance.

"What happens if neither of us wins?"

"Then whether or not you take my deal is totally up to you and I will only hold you to your silence on what you have learned so far." Naruto was giving her a look that seemed a mix of many things but the mask was making him difficult to read. He looked like he really wanted her to take the bet but at the same time all his body language screamed apathy. It was an interesting contrast, begging and not caring at the same time.

"Okay, how do we start?" Naruto's grin seemed to stretch off his face despite being covered and his blue eyes lit with mischief. She suddenly had no problem believing that he had indeed painted the Hokage monument right under the eyes of an entire village of shinobi and nearly gotten away with it. She was struck by the further realization that Naruto was the only crazy son-of-a-bitch who would ever try something this audacious.

"Well let's start with the looks as those will probably be the easiest to get nailed down. I assume your way is mostly based on how the girl looks? If that's okay I think we better start with Orioke no jutsu adding clothes and go from there."

There was a burst of smoke later and a blonde, pig-tailed girl with whisker marks stood there in a navy blue sports bra and plain white cotton panties. Sakura's jaw dropped, then clenched, then her fist balled up ready to unleash hell and violence on her conspirator.

"I'm gonna take this time to remind you of the threat I made last time you tried to hit me. The reason I'm so scantily clad is I assumed you had some specific outfit in mind or at least a general idea about how you wanted it done. So rather than me come up clothes I thought looked good and attempting to just modify them to fit what you want I'm giving you a clean slate." Sakura cocked her head to the side as if seeing him for the first time ever. Her fist uncurled and her hands came up to rest akimbo while her legs took a confident and aggressive stance.

"This is going to take some serious adjustment: you making sense and everything that is. For what it's worth I'm sorry I just jumped to a conclusion again. I'll try to be better about that when we're alone but something tells me you wouldn't appreciate that in public, you have an image to uphold and all that. You're right about me having something specific in mind but first I wanna see you strut so just henge some pants, a t-shirt, get rid of those birthmarks put your hair in a ponytail, maybe shorten it up a bit and then we'll go walk around town while I explain what I want."

There was another quick poof of smoke and the female Naruto was decked out in dark blue denim capris, a wide beige belt that was tied instead of a buckle hanging off the hips with a white midriff exposing t-shirt with a sunflower print on the chest. The whisker marks were conspicuous in their absence and her blonde hair was pulled into a high pony tail much like the one Ino was known for, the difference being that 'her' bangs were all the same length and curved out over 'her' forehead stopping before reaching 'her' eyebrows.

"Is this kinda what you're looking for or did you want to change my hair color to something else. Remember blonde isn't very common around here and he might suspect something is up if he's never seen me before and if I stand out in a crowd he's going to wonder why he's never seen me."

"Hmm, well we'll just have to risk it because with blonde hair you can do a lot more outfit combinations that will work better. Come on we're going on a quick shopping trip!" This suggestion got another raised eyebrow from Naruto. Sakura correctly interpreted this look as a 'what the hell am I going to do with clothes I can only wear as a girl' look and explained for his benefit. "We're not actually going to buy anything we're just going to look at some options, maybe try some on just so I'll know what I want you to add to your henge. Don't look at me like this will be painful if your henge is as good as you say then you'll actually enjoy this because every girl enjoys shopping."

-- break --

"I will never go shopping with you ever again. I might not have offered this bet as a way to get what I want if I knew in advance how much of a pain in my ass this was going to be." Naruto groaned; the 'quick' shopping trip had taken four _hours_. "I hope you got what you needed doing that because that was the last time I'm doing that."

"Yes thank you, I know exactly what I want you to do. I want you to henge exactly like you were today in that gorgeous white sundress with the ivy and the spaghetti straps while I do your hair."

"You're going to try this tonight? Wow you're brave we've barely got two hours before all sane people are going to bed."

"Yes I know but this isn't going to be hard, you are going to strut past him when he's heading home. He will stop for you…" "What if he doesn't?" "He will stop for you! Then you will ask him if he wants to go to the lunar viewing next week with you." All the time she was explaining this Sakura was combing and arranging Naruto's hair.

"Okay but for what it's worth I don't think it'll work."


	3. Chapter 2

_Holy shit! She was right he's coming right down this street right when she said he was. Either the teme is really predictable or he's got one hell of a stalker._ Just like Sakura had said it was dark and cool and Sasuke was nearly the only person on the street as he made his way from the Uchiha training grounds to his apartment several blocks away. Naruto did exactly as Sakura instructed sauntering over towards him almost oozing sexuality.

-- break --

Apparently Sasuke drowned in the sheer volume of sensuality that the female Naruto had emitted. The good news, if there was any from this, was that Sasuke was now proven to be heterosexual. As soon as Naruto had stopped in front of him and trailed one manicured finger down his chest the Uchiha's nose exploded in a venerable fire hose of blood. Unfortunately upon waking and regaining some composure he'd informed Naruto he wasn't interested in 'weak sluts like you' and left the scene. And already Sakura had lost the bet, this was based on Naruto's argument and Sakura's grudging acceptance that the form Sakura had created would be rebuffed continually from now on. This theory had suddenly gained weight when Naruto mentioned that this experience would undoubtedly solidly entrench the teme's subconscious dislike of all blondes. Thus with Ino's chances at romance with the tragic orphan drastically reduced it was Naruto's turn to show his skills at dating.

"So, that was a spectacular failure, ne? When are you going to try to get a date from him?"

"Probably tomorrow after our mission. I just have to catch him before he makes it to a training ground a total stranger wouldn't be allowed in."

"What's your plan?"

"Now Sakura-chan, that would be telling." Sakura sighed in anticipation of her coming defeat; there was that damn grin again. Well she might as well get used to the idea of helping him out. Besides deep down she was actually looking forward to seeing what he would create with her help.

"Do you need any help with anything that could be solved in forty-five minutes or less?" He turned his head towards her and seemed to contemplate whether or not it was worth starting something when they had less than an hour to finish.

"Nothing serious, more of a fashion question really. I finally got the seal tweaked right I had some of my Kage Bunshins working on it while we were screwing around with that henge. It's gonna suppress everything except for a fixed amount which was tricky getting to work right. It turned out to be sort of a combination of the percentage and fixed seals. The question I have is that since it's a training method and a way to have an ace in the hole I need it to be easily removable but it also has to touch bare skin. So my question is where I should put it and how should it be put there. The original idea and the inspiration came from a character in my manga who wore it as an eye patch hiding a totally functional eye for that extra bit of challenge by creating a large blind spot, but with this mask I already look enough like Kakashi-sensei."

Sakura sat back and started thinking of possibilities. "How big is the seal?" He held up a hand with his thumb and index finger touching indicating a circle about three centimeters in diameter. She nodded more to herself than as an acknowledgement to his approximation. "Is there any way that you could put the seal inside your mask? If it needs direct skin contact all you would have to do would be to flip that portion down. If you put it in the back you wouldn't even have to uncover your face to do it." Naruto sat up from where he was laying back and looked at her with amazed eyes.

"Perfect! That's a perfect idea!" She watched as his hands dove into one of the half dozen pouches on the back of his belt to dig out a small circle of white felt with markings on it. Another quick dig though his pouches produced a sewing needle and a small spool of ninja wire. He whisked the mask off and set about sewing the seal into the back of his mask. Sakura was starting to wonder how many times she would be shocked before she just accepted that he was going to keep doing things that she would never expect of him. The sewing was finished remarkably fast and rather professionally done. The mask was returned to it place and she felt a sudden surge of chakra before she felt Naruto's chakra clearer than ever before. She frowned, a suppression seal should mean that she should feel less of his chakra because logically he would be emitting less.

Naruto shuddered and let out a huge relaxing sigh. He looked over at the pink-haired girl sitting off to his left and saw her confused frown. He wondered why she was confused and then he chuckled. Sakura looked up at the soft laughter coming from Naruto.

"I always had to suppress my chakra so I wouldn't scare anyone with how much I have. I won't demonstrate by removing the seal and letting go because that would have the ANBU running after us in no time and I don't feel like explaining or moving just yet. When I said that I had lots of chakra but no control I meant it. Academy students aren't supposed to have lots of chakra so they learn control and as they learn and practice control their reserves grow meaning they have to do more control exercises and the cycle repeats. When I entered the academy at six, like everyone else I had no idea how to control chakra, unlike everyone else around me I already had reserves on par with a high-level genin ninjutsu specialist. As I've mentioned I don't know a lot of the things that the academy was supposed to teach us and while not all of that is my fault it still means that I didn't know any chakra control exercises until Iruka-sensei taught me leaf floating when I was twelve. To get the bigger picture or rather the more recent picture I have chakra reserves that could likely compete with Kakashi-sensei but less control than a third year academy student."

Sakura was speechless. To have high-jonin chakra reserves and more than that to have reserves that were possibly in the top ten highest in the village without control of his chakra it was amazing he hadn't accidentally killed someone with an overpowered fire starting jutsu.

"I see you are starting to understand the problem. The reason you felt the surge was that I went from suppressing most of my own chakra to keep the people around me safe to relaxing and letting my new seal take care of all but a low-chunin level of chakra. It will be just like I've only got the reserves of a low-chunin but as I use my chakra it will regenerate much faster than normal because I'm not actually running out I'm just not allowing myself access to it all. With luck this will mean that I can work on chakra control without too much risk of increasing my reserves drastically. Regardless when I first unseal myself it's going to be a shock and will cause an enormous surge before I can get it under control again. It will actually be helpful, that surge, as my opponent will hopefully be shocked enough to hesitate. But enough about my seal, it's time for you to go home. You don't have to meet me here afterwards tomorrow but if you could possibly delay the teme enough for me to make the switch to female I would be very grateful. Perhaps grateful enough to show you a technique or give you some hints about creating one yourself."

Sakura nodded and yawned. They both got up and went there separate ways. Him off to eventually bed down in his decrepit apartment and her to the comfort of her parents' house.

-- break --

The next day saw Naruto continuing with the tree-climbing exercise with much greater success. Sasuke sat staring intently at a new scroll on chakra control refusing to take any advice from the dobe, it's unfortunate that every scroll or book he'd found had agreed with Naruto. Sakura had decided to interpret her Sasuke-kun's new interest in chakra control as tactile permission to practice her own with tree climbing.

To say that Kakashi was shocked to find Naruto standing upside down on a large branch fine tuning his control after completing the exercise to his satisfaction would be a gross understatement. To help with that shock Sakura decided to add her own thinking that if he overloaded he might reboot like she had. She accomplished this by calling down the traditional admonishment for being late from twelve meters up the same tree Naruto was upside down in.

Being an experienced shinobi Kakashi firmly grounded himself in something normal and with a quick glance to the brooding and unresponsive Uchiha survivor all was right in Kakashi's world again. He promptly pulled out his orange book and informed his team that they would be helping a local herbalist weed his garden.

-- break --

After completing their mission with a minimum of mistakenly pulled plants, Team 7 was finished for the day. Sasuke was disturbed from the nice new routine he'd had the last two days where Sakura had left immediately without asking for a date by Sakura running to his side and seizing his arm. He responded with all the tact of a Montana class battleship.

"Sakura do not ever touch me. Why can't you just leave me alone?" Sakura was crushed and for the very first time wondered why she put up with this time and time again.

"But Sasuke-kun you have to meet my new friend Uzuharaki Nanou! She just moved here and she's a kunoichi. She said she'd be practicing around here somewhere." Sakura was basically feeding Sasuke a huge steaming pile of bullshit but she wasn't feeling very nice after her most recent rejection.

The pair moved through a stand of trees separating their usual training ground from the one next to them on the way back to the Uchiha district. Upon clearing the trees Sakura's acting skills were put to the test as she saw the girl she knew to be Naruto cut a training post into pieces no larger than ten centimeters cubed with ninja wire that 'she' was manipulating with just her fingertips and what looked like some specialized gloves. Sakura called up all her not inconsiderable acting skills and kept a surprised look off her face and ran into the clearing calling out.

"Nanou-chan is that you? I want you to meet one of my teammates!" The 'girl' looked towards Sakura and smiled what might have been better described as an amused smirk. Any doubts that this was Naruto were dispelled when the 'girl's' eyes flashed the same azure as Naruto's eyes normally were. The form he was taking he'd probably modeled off of Hinata. 'Her' hair was dark brown and cut very short, almost boyish if it weren't for the longish bangs framing 'her' face. He'd chosen nondescript brown eyes and a complexion that couldn't really be called tan but neither could it be called pale. Overall this was a girl that you would pass on the street and never notice. Sakura raced forward ahead of Sasuke and glomped Naruto.

"Your name is Uzuharaki Nanou and you just moved here." Sakura whispered urgently into Naruto's ear while in the hug.

"Thanks." Naruto swiftly disengaged the hug acting like 'she' was very uncomfortable being touched like that. Naruto quickly switched into the role of Nanou and turned to eye the Uchiha.

"So this is the loser you were telling me about? Doesn't look like much." Nanou basically sneered. Sakura managed to swallow her laughter, who knew pranks could be this fun, and plaster a look on her face that told everyone she was very affronted.

"What?! No, Sasuke-kun isn't a loser. He was this year's rookie-of-the-year!"

"That means absolutely nothing in the real world. Kami, what a total load of bullshit, this is why they should only give pass or fail grades. If you rank the students you just get a bunch of stuck up snobs like this cunt-rag who think they're hot shit and then they get smacked around their first real mission and if their lucky they get over it posthaste and live much longer than the ones who persist in thinking that they're the best thing since tampons." Sakura was blushing a fairly fierce red from the language Nanou was using. Sasuke however was just about ready to explode, though nobody can be quite sure exactly what the cause was going to be, either the insults or the language.

"Fight me. If you're so strong, prove it." _Of course it never occurred to Sasuke-teme to just ask to fight he has to demand it. He really has an abrasive personality. No people skills at all_ thought Naruto.

"No."

"What?"

"You heard me. I don't need to prove my strength to you, what satisfaction could I get out of beating someone who probably still sucks on his kaasan's tits?" This last statement did it and Sasuke exploded. He rushed Nanou swinging wildly in his rage.

Sakura abandoned the area quickly but she was failing to see how pissing Sasuke off was going to get 'her' a date.

--

Sasuke was coming in wildly, putting all his strength behind each of his punches and kicks and he was being totally humiliated. Trying to hit Nanou was like trying to hold smoke; she just kept bending around all his strikes while calmly moving around him in a way that told him she was in total control of this fight. Deciding to really knuckle down and get serious he jumped back and started doing handseals. He noticed too late the smile that spoke of her victory and his defeat spreading across Nanou's face. He was abruptly stopped from doing anything as he found himself bound by what seemed like thousands of wires. He followed the telltale shimmer back to the two special gloves that Nanou was wearing.

"You're done. You let your anger get the best of you and let me bait you into attacking while I had the advantage. When you got frustrated instead of noticing that I wasn't counterattacking and remaining fairly safe in wearing me down you jumped back to execute a mid-range attack. What you either totally failed to notice or chose to ignore is that I use ninja wire as a means of attack which means that when it's already deployed, as should have been obvious from my unwillingness to use taijutsu attacks, at mid-range I own your arrogant ass. You stepped right into my trap and should I have wanted to I could have done the same thing to you as I did to that training post so even if you're working yourself out of those wires… unlikely… you would still lose because if you were an enemy you'd already be dead."

Sasuke went totally still. This girl was ruthless. More than just ruthless though she was powerful, he could feel her chakra levels from where he was and he could tell that they were higher than his and if she had been training all day as he suspected she had been then those levels were depleted from her full strength.

--

"Teach me."

"Huh? Teach you what? My wire tricks? No way! I created these and I'm not teaching them to anyone bar my children. You can go spend countless hours of your own time creating something worthy to call your own."

"Then teach me something else. Teach me to be stronger."

"I can spar with you once in a while. What time are you usually done with missions?"

"Usually around this time every day."

"It's a date then." With those parting words Nanou released her wires and spun on her heel to walk away from the training grounds.

Sakura was totally dumbfounded. Naruto had done in ten minutes what she had been trying to do for years.

--

Sasuke was speechless, that was not how that should have gone. There was no way he'd just agreed to a date with some homicidal kunoichi. Looking back on the last fifteen minutes he realized he'd not been in control for a second of it. First when Sakura had dragged him here, admittedly he was going to pass though here anyway but she'd touched him and taken the choice away, then when he'd met Nanou. From the first words out of her mouth Nanou had taken total control of everything around her. He wanted to learn that. That's what he would ask her to teach him he decided as he walked off towards the Uchiha district to start searching the scrolls for counters to ninja wire attacks.

--

Sakura was torn. She wanted to follow her Sasuke-kun obviously, but she also knew that he would be even less responsive than usual if the look on his face was anything to go by. His usual emotionless mien was replaced by one of low grade astonishment. On the other hand though she wanted to rush to Naruto, fall to her knees and beg to be taught how to control the things around her like that.

She decided that Naruto would probably be more forthcoming than her crush would at that moment and took off pell-mell in the direction that Naruto had left in.

Sakura knew she'd caught up to Naruto when she heard the rhythmic tinkling of his bells as he walked. She picked up her pace and burst out beside Naruto just in time to see him rewrapping ninja wire around his forearm wrappings.

"You are some kind of Kami aren't you?" Naruto burst out laughing so hard he had to stop walking. "I'm not kidding! There is no way that you could have done what you just did if you weren't some kind of god. I will do anything if you teach me how to do what you just did."

"I wasn't just acting when I told the teme I wouldn't teach him my wire tricks."

"No, no, no, no, not the wire tricks, those were awesome by the way, I mean how you just took over after I hugged you. Sasuke didn't have a choice in anything he did, you just got him to do exactly what you wanted and you got me to do exactly what you wanted and I didn't even know what you wanted at the time. I wanna know how you seemed like you were in complete control."

"Well that's actually much harder than I made it look. Most of it however is confidence. Just knowing that you are more powerful and more skilled and have more tricks up your sleeve than the people around you is a big part of it. I was able to control you both because I knew how you would react and I knew that I could beat Sasuke-teme so I was confident in my abilities and then I just reached out and started poking the right buttons. I knew if I got the teme mad enough he'd attack without a plan or any finesse. I knew that if a fight broke out you would move out of the way because you wouldn't want to be involved. I knew that when just hitting me failed the teme would jump back for a jutsu so I left my wires laying down where it would only take a split second to wrap Sasuke in them. When he jumped back all I had to do was wait until he was close enough to the ground to get him."

--

Naruto turned to Sakura after his explanation to find her deep in thought. She seemed to be doing that a significant amount of the time she spent around him. He wasn't sure how he felt about this but it kept her from hitting him and belittling him so that was good news. He turned back around and continued his leisurely walk back to his apartment to get his fuuinjutsu supplies to begin work on his resistance seal. He absently noted Sakura following him still deep in the recesses of her mind puzzling over a problem, he flattered himself that the problem was him but he knew that realistically she was probably compiling a list of all her skills as a kunoichi and trying to come up with something that she was good at. He noticed that the longer she was in thought the more depressed she seemed to get. Time for an uplifting motivational speech!

"You know you can turn your amazing chakra control into a really dangerous weapon? They say that the legendary Sannin Tsunade uses precise chakra control to create her monstrous strength. If you could duplicate that or come up with something similar you'd really have something. Most people underestimate kunoichi assuming that they're weak. Now if you were able to crater solid rock with a single punch or kick you could use that misconception to get them close to hit em. And if you can do that much damage with a single hit then it's only gonna take one hit to finish the fight. Remember also that medic-nins are in really high demand because of the difficulty in becoming an effective one, so there's always that route."

Sakura paused for a bit looking at something far in the distance as she thought about what he said. It didn't take long before she looked up at him and smiled a soft smile. She shook her head slightly. "You really care about us as a Team don't you?" She asked him looking up into his eyes as if to determine more hidden meaning behind whatever words he gave up as his answer.

"Well yeah, but just between you and me I like you quite a bit more than the other two." He said winking at her. Sakura just shook her head at him. She needed to get home and then get to the shinobi library for some advanced chakra control exercises if she was going to duplicate something one of the legendary Sannin still uses while Sakura was a genin.

"I gotta go Naruto. What are you going to do about Sasuke-kun now that you have a date with him?"

"Well I've got three options as I see it. I could leave him a note that explained that Nanou left on a mission and didn't expect to be back for awhile. I could show up as Nanou, spar for a bit, leave, and take it no further thus fulfilling my commitments. Finally and probably least likely I could show up as Nanou and as soon as he showed up and said hi I could drop the henge and see what happens."

"Yah I'd definitely recommend the first or second options. Though if you went with the first I'd make sure to include a suggestion on alternate sparring partners."

"That's a great idea! I need to talk to Lee! Bye Sakura-chan!" Naruto sprinted off in a plume of dust and a storm of chimes. Sakura shook her head before starting her own jog to her house and from there to the genin library. She thought that a short stop in the hospital to inform them of her burgeoning interest in ijutsu would be in order as well.

-- break --

Two weeks had gone by since Team 7 had the "Nanou" incident. Sasuke had been spending his afternoon's right after Team meetings and the subsequent missions sparring with Rock Lee. Sakura had been studying almost nonstop devouring anything even remotely related to ijutsu and advanced chakra control. She also seemed to be taking copious notes on something as Naruto was constantly seeing her scribbling in her recently nearly omnipresent notepad.

Naruto was juggling several projects and was very close to completing one. His resistance seal was nearly finished as soon as he fine-tuned the method of adjusting and releasing the seal he was going to go get it tattooed on one of his shoulder blades. Thankfully he'd met an ex-ANBU who had opened up his own specialty tattoo parlor that he could trust to do it right. His other Bleach inspired project was still developing theoretically; he'd found that it took far too much chakra and concentration to maintain a shell around himself as he'd originally thought would be the solution. Now he was leaning towards chakra augmentation.

Every shinobi and kunoichi who had even the most basic of taijutsu training knew that you could augment your strength, speed, and reflexes by pushing chakra into the muscles you wanted to boost the performance of. The downside to this was that the augmentation was directly proportional to how strong, quick your reflexes, or fast you already were. Thus if you were weak no matter how much chakra you flooded into your muscles you were still going to be relatively weak, conversely if you were strong and added a little chakra to your muscles your strength increased by huge amounts.

Naruto's idea was that if you saturated your skin in chakra that it would become more resilient. This was true but not even close to the amount he was hoping for and even more disheartening what that the practice was already commonplace, especially among Iwa-nin. So Naruto was now looking through some helpful ijutsu scrolls that detailed self-healing which he'd gotten from Sakura after explaining his problem. So far what he'd understood and what seemed helpful was to meditate and in a meditative state use precise amounts of chakra to change the composition or structure of his skin cells to be stronger or to become much stronger in the presence of chakra.

As far as Naruto could tell beyond a library's worth of notes and eight or so new ijutsu which were mostly just different diagnostic jutsu, Sakura didn't have a whole lot to show for her reading. Naruto had faith though; after all it wasn't even plausible for a greenhorn genin to be reverse engineering one of the greatest taijutsu techniques of modern shinobi times. Naruto had offered to help or at least be a sounding board and that had seemed to help immensely. Sakura had decided that it was probably much like the Hyuuga Jyuuken in that chakra was released at the point of impact. Naruto wasn't so sure, if it was that simple than the Hyuuga taijutsu style would not the called the _gentle_ fist. He thought that it was similar to the chakra augmentation of muscles but obviously she couldn't have weak muscles so she must have done something to them to make them look weak but really were very strong already. He suggested to Sakura that she should look into self healing techniques as a way to change her muscle structure, to try to make her muscles much denser without losing the shape and lithe look. He also reminded her that genjutsu was a very powerful tool and that if she was unable to change her fundamental muscle structure that she shouldn't hesitate to work out and they could later add a permanent illusion on her via inked or tattooed seal that would hide the advanced musculature. They talked and bounced ideas around a little while longer and eventually agreed that it would probably behoove them to try all the methods to see which one bore the best results.

There were other less obvious changes in the two weeks that Naruto noticed though he doubted his teammates did and if Kakashi noticed he didn't say anything. The first of the subtle changes was Sasuke's attitude after being beaten by a girl who looked their age or younger. He'd mellowed out some and was more willing to accept instruction and help. This caused another change, the much more important change in Naruto's eyes. By admitting that he was not Kami, even if he wouldn't outright admit to any faults, Sasuke became much more human and approachable. This had the unpleasant effect of compounding Sakura's crush on him and Naruto was once again the odd-man-out.

When Naruto learned that subtle changes in his teammates made for big changes in the team dynamic, he began to train himself to notice such small and seemingly insignificant details in the wider world around him. He was starting to make progress putting these small clues together to make a bigger picture that could accurately represent where they were headed as a Team and in more general terms what would happen in certain situations with anyone. In looking at these small clues he noticed something that he felt he should probably have noticed immediately: Kakashi didn't like either him or Sakura. Actually to be more precise Kakashi was apathetic towards Sakura believing her to be mostly useless as a kunoichi and where she was useful he had nothing to teach her i.e. he had no useful ijutsu for her to learn or practice. It was Naruto that he didn't like. Upon this realization Naruto had done some desperate digging through Kakashi's past to see what the reason for this apparent irrational dislike was. When he found the reason he couldn't say he was surprised.

Kakashi had been the student of the Yondaime when the former Hokage had been assigned a genin team, so it wasn't unreasonable to assume that Naruto reminded Kakashi of yet another thing he had lost. And Kakashi seemed to find the idea of teaching the thing that killed his sensei absolutely repugnant. The idea that Naruto might be totally innocent of the perceived wrongs had never entered his head. Kakashi was content to live in and brood about the past; therefore it was also easy to place blame on Naruto for crimes he hadn't committed. The realization that Kakashi was using Naruto as a scapegoat firmly in mind he decided that he was going to need some extra help that didn't come out of a book or scroll. Thus there was nothing for it but to talk to the Sandaime about getting some of that oh-so-delicious extra help.

-- break --

Naruto had long since found that getting into the office of the Hokage was much easier if you were some nondescript chunin messenger apparently back from delivering another largely trivial document of some sort to a council member or some other bureaucrat. As such Naruto ducked into an alley several streets away from the Hokage tower to henge himself into something appropriate (it had taken him many mistaken ANBU arrests to realize that switching into a disguise right in the view of the same people who are trying to foil such plots was not done). Emerging from said alley wearing his own particularly effective version of the henge he marched up to the doors of the tower confidently. Part of the trick of being in disguise was to also take on the mannerisms of the person you are trying to impersonate. In the case of using someone who doesn't actually exist but is just based on a stereotype, all you have to do is copy very general factors of common behavior. In this case it was to walk calmly through the doors with a look of confidence that you were where you were supposed to be and slight boredom as if you can think of at least two dozen other things you'd rather be doing than messenger duty.

Naruto managed to keep up his farce all the way into the Hokage's office where upon closing the door he immediately dropped the transformation.

Sarutobi looked up from his endless paperwork at the slight flexing of a chakra signature that denoted a minor technique either being applied or mid-level technique being released. A quick check for minor genjutsu convinced the aging man that nothing was amiss which meant that Naruto had just released whatever mid-level illusion he had used to get himself past his secretary without being yelled at, not that the secretary disliked him just that she didn't like anyone interrupting 'paperwork time'.

The overworked Hokage gladly pushed aside the current slice of nightmare in favor of the certain to be interesting reason the blonde boy was in his office. He could honestly say that he truly enjoyed Naruto interrupting 'paperwork time' because it was always something totally unexpected and was almost guaranteed to be nothing serious. So to say that Sarutobi had gotten a little too complacent around his favorite genin distraction would be a true statement. Thus he was totally unprepared when Naruto shored up his reputation as the most unpredictable with his unusually grave face and surprisingly serious inquiries.

"Say ojiisan, you got enough time on your hands to help me with something that's probably gonna take an hour or so?"

"If it's worth an hour then that is what I'm prepared to spend on it. You know that I always listen to your problems and try to help with them if they're serious Naruto."

"I know that ojiisan; it's just that this one isn't going to be pleasant to hear about."

Sarutobi took in the seriousness of his words and the total lack of his typical mask and settled back for a real unpleasant dose of the darker side of human nature and how it can be focused on an innocent teen. He was actually one of the few people who had ever seen Naruto without his nearly ever-present emotional mask on. Because of Naruto's trust in the old man, the Sandaime knew just how much smarter Naruto actually was than how intelligent he appeared to be. Fact was that Sarutobi believed that Naruto was holding back secrets from him as well but he had neither the time nor the inclination to find out just what, he could hardly begrudge the boy his secrets, heaven knew the village had done a remarkable job of stripping Naruto of trust in anyone. So knowing that the mask had come off the elderly Hokage made himself even more comfortable in the already sinfully comfortable desk chair he was in.

"Well how about you explain it all the way through so that I know what's going on?"

"Ok, so, it's like this. You or the academy or someone has assigned me a jonin-sensei who is not going to teach me anything unless he is forced to with a kunai held to his neck. Now don't tell that he is I know enough about the people that like to make my life incredibly difficult to know one when I see one, I'll admit Kakashi-san was better at hiding it than most but let's face it we have been a team for two weeks and he hasn't shown up on time nor taught us anything. The problem however is much more complicated than just your ordinary negligent sensei because Kakashi must have majority backing of the council to train the remaining Uchiha. Thus you can't just say that he's a bad sensei and remove him from his post. That would put a strain on the favors your proponents on the council owe you and this really isn't important enough to risk weakening your powerbase for.

"So since I've gloom and doomed on you for bit and made you aware of the problem I think I have a temporary, slipshod solution. Kakashi is apathetic about Sakura which means that if she can advance enough studying with me in our off time then Kakashi will take an interest in her and start training her as well as Sasuke, albeit at a much reduced capacity to a normal sensei, but I never said my solution was perfect. Me… he wouldn't train even if I were to hold a kunai to his throat and demand a single D-rank jutsu of his choice.

"I've been studying on my own and been making some progress, I've even got some of my control issues on their way to being worked out, as you may have noticed my much reduced chakra signature I've modified a chakra suppression seal and am wearing it to reduce my chakra pressure enough to do the easier chakra control exercises without overloading them constantly. What I need from you is either some occasional instruction in the form of me asking you questions about stuff I'm studying and you getting me more materials or I need you to direct me to someone who is capable of doing that in your stead along with the proper documents that will force them to do it if they don't just agree. If it helps the first thing I'm going to need help with is a taijutsu style as I've got some patched together academy shit that is probably mostly wrong."

Sarutobi sat back silently and contemplated this new problem and pondered possible solutions to it. Ideally he would remove Kakashi from his position and assign one of the other jonin who had volunteered to take a jonin-sensei position, but as Naruto had pointed out Kakashi did have a majority of the council backing him to train the Uchiha, it was a disgustingly sizable majority too.

Naruto had indeed been fairly accurate in his understanding of the problem from the angles he could see. There was no need to check the boy's details or even search for a second opinion on Kakashi's teaching methods. If anything, Naruto harbored a very subtle inferiority complex that asserted itself in gross understatements referring to the scope of the problems facing Naruto himself, though he didn't similarly understate other's problems.

The old man reached for his pipe and absently began filling it and lighting it and he mulled the problem over in his mind again. So far all the solutions that had immediately jumped out in his mind were unacceptable in one form or another. He couldn't teach the boy himself, as much as he'd like to, because he didn't have the required free time to do it with the care necessary for a genin's growth. He couldn't remove Naruto from the team because he had nobody to replace him with and nowhere to put Naruto once he'd been removed. He could assign another jonin or high-chunin to privately tutor the boy but who would be willing to do that and more worrisome would the willing ones be capable of teaching what was needed. What he needed to do was think like Naruto and come up with a solution to the problem that nobody had thought of before.

As he lit his pipe and took a drag, Sarutobi longed for the days when conflict was shinobi to shinobi and he could use Enma's transformed state to end said conflict. He jerked up sitting ramrod-straight in his chair as the proverbial light bulb lit up over his head. His serious mien transformed into a devious grin. It would suit Naruto very well he thought, after all Naruto was very acrobatic, wild, unpredictable, cunning, and relentless; basically everything required for the style. Yes, the old Hokage nodded to himself that's what they would do.

"What would you say if I told you that I have a jutsu that would solve your problem in the short term, Naruto?"

"I suppose I would ask how and wonder if this is just one of those things that will end up hurting me later much like taking up brawling did in the academy. It worked for awhile but now it's all but useless and I'm without even a suitable basis to experiment off of."

"No it would honestly and genuinely help your taijutsu but that would probably be all that it would help, which means that it is a poor substitute for a real sensei but you can always come to be with jutsu related questions and I will make even more of an effort to help you out as I am now aware of your position with your assigned sensei."

"Well bring on the jutsu old man!" Naruto's eyes were practically gleaming with joy and greed at learning a jutsu that was apparently powerful enough to legitimately correct his taijutsu. _This must be some technique_. Thought Naruto if, as the Sandaime had implied, it would actually improve his taijutsu as opposed to just shore up his current skills such as a strength or speed increasing jutsu might.

"I'm going to have you sign my summoning contract for apes and once you have become proficient enough at summoning them one or more of the higher level summons will be teaching you a new taijutsu style that while being formidable on it's own will mesh well with specific special abilities associated with ape summons. Obviously the apes will be unable to teach you jutsu but knowing your perchance for jutsu creation, and your abilities to spot useful traits that are often overlooked I'm sure you'll get more out of it that just an education in taijutsu."

So explaining thus, Sarutobi nicked his finger on a letter opener and ran through a short set of seals before summoning a four foot tall monkey clutching a foot-long scroll as if both of their existences would end if it were to let go. Seeing Sarutobi the monkey quickly calmed down and handed over the scroll to the old man who then passed it to Naruto.

"The seals and method are listed in the scroll. You must first sign in blood and the fingerprints of the same hand used to sign also in blood underneath your name, you'll see what I mean. Once you have summoned an ape of sufficient level to talk and convinced the ape clan as a whole that you are a worthy summoner just give the scroll to one of your summons and it will find it's way back to either myself or you as need may be. Be careful that you don't let anyone have that scroll as summoning is a very sought after jutsu and contracts are jealously guarded and thus hard to come by. If you feel that you aren't making progress feel free to come back to me but please wait at least a week before doing so."

Naruto absently nodded as he stared at the scroll before abruptly standing, tying the scroll to hang below his belt-mounted equipment pouches, and transforming using his version of the henge back into the chunin he had used to get in this time with a scroll in hand. He immediately wrenched open the door and bolted off as if the scroll in his possession was important enough to warrant the long talk with the Hokage and he wanted to get it to the recipient and out of his hands as soon as possible.

-- break --

Not ten minutes after his conversation with the man he considered his ojiisan, Naruto was sitting in his favorite bamboo grove with his signature still drying on the scroll already making handseals and summoning chakra.

His first attempt was, of course like hundreds of ninja before him, a complete failure. Instead of a fight capable monkey, Naruto got a tiny ball of black fluff with four spindly appendages, a tail, a disproportionately enormous head, and two monstrous eyes staring at him as if to accuse him of not being his kaasan. Not wanting to piss of a potentially important ape matriarch he promptly dismissed the babe summon and tried to remember the exact feeling the summoning invoked along with about how much chakra was used so that he could through lots more at it in what he hoped was the generally correct way in a vain hope of getting something bigger and much less likely to piss off the mother apes, who by dent of raising the next generation must have some leverage amongst who was decided upon as a worthy summoner.

His second summoning attempt went much better. With at least some idea of how the chakra should flow he felt much better about getting the summoning right. He gathered about twice as much chakra as before, and then he bit his thumb before repeating the handseals and again slamming his hand into the ground. A much bigger plume of smoke arose from the area and Naruto felt himself pushed back away from his chosen spot.

When the smoke cleared he found himself staring down at a pitch black monkey that was probably eye-level to his knee. The monkey was wearing a typical pair of shinobi pants wrapped around the shins and a kimono, both a solid forest green with red waves along all the edges of the kimono. It had an extraordinarily long tail that was easily as long as it was tall and seemed to be a uniform thickness, about as wide as its arms. The monkey was currently in a staring contest with Naruto trying to glare him down with dark green eyes. (AN: look up 'woolly monkey' just like that except black with green eyes and young Jiraiya's clothing style)

The glare may have worked, it was even more effective given the much elongated canine teeth on both the lower and upper jaw, but the fact was that Naruto just wouldn't be able to live with himself if he flinched away from something that was probably not even sixty centimeters tall. It didn't take long for the monkey to realize that it couldn't intimidate something roughly three and a half times taller than it was.

Once the glaring was at its end Naruto and the monkey began to look at each other curiously, though for different reasons. Naruto wondered what the monkey before him could do, or teach, or if the monkey was of high enough rank to make a decision on whether or not he could keep summoning them. The monkey was curious about meeting its first human; what would it act like, would they do anything or was this summoner looking for one of the other monkeys. Naruto, still holding tightly to his impatience regardless of his hidden maturity and intelligence, broke the silence first.

"Ne, are you one of the ones who can talk?" Were the monkey not more dignified, or so it thought of itself, it would have slapped its forehead into its hand and begged Kami to know the reason that it had to deal with this. As the situation stood and the monkey having a higher sense of pride than would allow that it settled for silently asking Kami 'why me?'.

"Yes, I can talk what did you expect? I'm a summoned animal why wouldn't I be able to talk you summoned me here to be of use and we really wouldn't be of use if we weren't able to communicate."

"Oh, well it's just that you're only the second thing I've summoned ever and I remember hearing that it was a lot harder to get something high-level enough to talk." Naruto finished this statement by sheepishly placing his hand behind his neck and doing an altogether uncanny impression of his sensei's eye-smile.

"Wow, I'm really your second ever try at summoning? You must have some HUGE chakra reserves. Well at least that's what my mam and pop say. What's your name anyway? I don't think I've ever heard of you, which is really understandable if you've only ever summoned once before but sometimes we get to meet the people the contract holders want to sign the contract before we actually let them. Who gave you the contract anyway? There are only, like, three people with current contracts." This was all very rushed and Naruto got the impression that the ape contract didn't get used very often and they didn't get out of wherever they went to when they weren't summoned very often.

"I'm Uzumaki Naruto, the next Hokage! Ojiisan gave me the contract he said that it would help me to learn an actual taijutsu style instead of just the 'here is fist, punch' style that I use. What is your name anyway, I thought it was only polite to tell someone your own name before you ask theirs."

"To tell you the truth males of the ape clan's noble line don't have names until we complete the trials of adulthood, which is supposedly when we're allowed to be summoned so I'm really surprised I got summoned at all. I'm a little bit of an outcast among my family line my trials didn't go so well I'm afraid."

"How didn't they go well? Obviously they were good enough to accept you as summon-able otherwise you wouldn't be here. What are the trials?" Naruto was apparently expecting a long and involved story because he sat down and started to make himself comfortable.

"Well you may know that the third Hokage is famous for using the monkey king Enma in battle as a staff that changes size, is capable of cutting, and is nearly invulnerable. The thing is that all of the noble ape clan summons can turn into a staff. Most are like Enma's transformed state just being a standard looking staff of varying colors. The ranking of the noble line is determined by the versatility and power of our transformed state. For example Enma is king because he can change the most while retaining his ability to cut and his strength against blows.

"My trials didn't go so well because when I transformed I didn't transform into a standard staff. I'm only half noble and while it shouldn't matter something happened and I turn into a spear, but it gets worse than just having a blade on one end. When we go through the trials we are put into a trance to better unlock all of our abilities, this way we have a better idea of what we are capable of in our staff forms and are more focused in how we train to better ourselves. While I was under this trance a section of the top of the spear about the same length as the blade down from where it connects to the haft disconnected and spooled out chain connecting it to the haft. Again, this is something that really shouldn't have happened according to the elders but it got worse! While the tip was disconnected the blade twisted edge down at a right angle and became crescent-shaped to form a scythe. Thankfully at that point the chain reeled back in and now I was a scythe. Finally when it looked like it was all over the end that wasn't bladed randomly sprouted a fifteen centimeter spike! When I finally transformed back after they tested how durable my haft was, everyone looked at me like I was some kind of freak, as if I can consciously choose what I look like the first time I transform. (AN: like the chain scythe from samurai champloo with some obvious differences)

"Anyway, the elders say that my unusual form comes from my samurai-ape heritage and are still debating whether or not I passed and should be given a name or if I should be relegated to the samurai branch and be taught to fight with weapons _for_ my summoner instead of being used as a weapon _by_ my summoner."

Naruto sat back and, in a move reminiscent of the Sandaime just moments (or hours) ago, pondered the problem of his new nameless friend. He was so lost in thought he didn't even notice the monkey scramble onto his lap, up his chest, around to the back of his neck and begin to study and play with the bells in his hair. When those lost their entertainment value the perpetually curious monkey decided to see what his summoner's face looked like and grabbed the edge of Naruto's mask. Naruto immediately began paying attention again and jerked the monkey around in front of him by his extra long tail.

"Please don't remove my mask. I have a chakra limiter sewn into the back of the mask and if you remove it I loose control of my chakra. As I have a very large amount of chakra, its sudden release would bring all kinds of annoying people and their even more annoying questions about what I was doing." Naruto waited until he got an upside-down nod from the summon before he continued. "I don't really think that's a problem, you being moved between branches, as long as I can summon you I can use you as my weapon. What I don't like is that I don't have anything to call you and thus I can't be sure that I'm going to get you every time even if I'm always using the same amount of chakra to call you."

"But it is a problem. Every contract holder must choose an ape of the noble line to use as his or her weapon. It's part of the agreement you make to be able to summon apes at all. If you were to keep summoning me instead of your chosen weapon that would be looked on as an insult and your contract with the ape clan would be revoked."

"Well then, who do I have to summon to convince them that I want you as my weapon? I don't care what the elders think that sounds like a damn cool weapon."

"The only one I can think of that might make a difference would be Enma. Otherwise you'd have to summon all the elders at once, but because they're not combat summons I doubt you'd be able to call on them without the help of a really high ranking noble ape. This means that you'd be better off summoning an ape that can overrule the council of elders and the only ape capable of doing that would be the ape king Enma."

"Okay, how much chakra do you think that would take?" The monkey Naruto had summoned just staring at him (still upside-down) in shock. He was having trouble grasping the idea that Naruto would actually try summoning the ape king just to insure that he would have a weapon that most of the noble apes thought was an abomination.

"Well you'd probably have to take off your limiter seal so you might wanna go somewhere that you're not gonna be bothered by your annoying people with annoying questions." Naruto nodded as if confirming his decision and then stood still gripping the monkey by the tail and headed off to the Hokage monument. He knew of a training field behind the monument that looked like it didn't get used very often at all and with any luck was another one of those ANBU specific private training grounds that none of them ever bothered with. The monkey in his hand noticing that Naruto hadn't thought to offer a different position which he could ride in decided to bow to the inevitable and wrap the excess tail sticking out of the blonde's fist around Naruto's wrist so he wouldn't fall.

-- break --

The now distinctly un-amused monkey hanging from Naruto's wrist was observing the deserted new training ground from his own unique perspective. The place looked very nice. It was a fairly open field with plenty of good grass around the edges continuing about half the radius of the roughly circular clearing before becoming hard packed dirt with interspersed rock outcroppings. The edges of the field couldn't have been defined better with a fence as the trees surrounding the field went from unbelievably dense to no trees at all. Running through one side (if a circle can have sides) of the training ground was a shallow but comparatively broad stream. The stream was probably no deeper than a foot anywhere along the length that ran through the field but was nowhere narrower than two and a half meters wide. The monkey decided that the stream had probably been placed there for some specific training reason, diverted from a much deeper stream or water source somewhere nearby.

Naruto mostly ignored his picturesque surroundings in favor of walking directly to the circle of wasteland at its center and letting his passenger down on a flat-topped rock near the center. The hyperactive and yet at the same time serious boy then turned to address the monkey.

"Okay, this place should be far enough from the general population and the majority of shinobi that I can probably get away with a short surge. With some small manner of luck all the annoying people I'm trying to avoid will write it off as an overpowered chunin technique that I'm using in a much closer training area than we are actually in. I don't want to tempt fate though, so I'm not going to remove the seal until I absolutely have to. If you really want this to work you could give me an idea of exactly how much chakra I'm going to need and then you can take the seal off me as soon as I draw blood to keep the chakra surge as brief as possible. Of course you would put the seal back on as soon as I've made a successful summoning so we don't drag out the surge. Can you do that?"

"Yeah, that shouldn't be a problem. The only thing I might worry about would be the surge accidentally dispelling my connection to this plane. I don't think it will happen but because you're doing the same thing that brought me here on a much larger scale I might be caught in the crossfire so to speak."

"Well that might be okay anyway. After all you said you're the only one who looks like you do transformed so it's not like I need to point to you to make it known which monkey I'm talking about. And you should be able to hold the seal in such a way that if you're dispelled the seal will snap back onto me which means I can just re-summon you and we can try again without too many questions." At this the monkey nodded and his green eyes hardened with determination.

"To be safe let's assume that I'm the lowest level noble summon which means that Enma is going to take something like twenty times the chakra it took to summon me. The good news is that when you're throwing around that much chakra you can afford to be a little sloppy as long as you call out Enma's name when you do the summoning. That will guarantee that Enma will show up as long as you have the minimum amount. Even if you use enough to pull a bigger summon through you won't because you're asking for Enma, get it?"

"Sure, just call the summon I want and as long as I have the minimum they'll come. Now the seal you're looking for is at the very back and top of my mask. It requires direct contact on its face to work so all you'll have to do is stretch out that part of my mask to pull it away from my skin. As soon as the seal totally leaves contact it will unleash my full chakra. A word of warning so you can prepare yourself however you can, I don't have enough control over my chakra to suppress it or turn it to something productive right away so when you unseal me there will be a surge right away just from the chakra that would normally leak off if I were to let it. After I've nicked my thumb and before I form the first handseal I need you to pull off the limiter and hold it away until I'm done."

"Yeah, yeah, you don't have to keep repeating yourself. It's not exactly hard to remember. I'll do my part you just worry about summoning."

Naruto then reached into his right kunai pouch and nicked his finger on one of the blades stored within before raising his hands in preparation to form seals. Seeing this, the summoned monkey grabbed the back of Naruto's facemask and pulled it back. Neither was prepared for the explosion.

When Naruto came up with the concept of limiting his chakra he was only concerned with how much was available to him at the time. After this incident he would have to look very hard into where all that chakra that he was limiting was going.

There were several reasons that Naruto believed that Bleach concepts could be used in shinobi battles and all of them related back to how the manga was similar to ninja life. The first obvious similarity was the segregation of the shinigami from the citizens of the soul society, much the same way that ninja were segregated from citizens in a hidden village. Not to say that they had to stay away from each other just that their profession and general interests didn't lead to much interaction. The second obvious similarity was between ninjutsu, genjutsu, and kido. The only real difference what that there seemed to be a smaller finite number of kido than there were of jutsu, that and kido were incantation instead of handseal combinations. The third similarity was probably the one that convinced Naruto that it was indeed possible to take concepts from a fictional story and apply them to his life and profession. This important similarity was between chakra and reiatsu. As far as Naruto was concerned when it came down to it those two terms were interchangeable. Anything one of the characters in Bleach could do with their spiritual force could be done with chakra; the only difference was in the details.

This gung-ho attitude towards emulating one of his favorite manga suddenly took on a whole new side, the downside. Naruto had neglected to test for any unsavory side effects that might result in the implementation of these crossover techniques. This time, in trying to emulate Zaraki Kenpachi, Naruto had sealed away most of his chakra potential. The apparent downside to this was the steady build-up of chakra _in_ or growth _of_ his chakra coils in an attempt to subvert the seal and give Naruto the amount of chakra his body felt he should have on hand.

Ki or killing intent was the projected emotion of hate, anger, bloodlust, and a whole host of other unsavory things to convince the person on the other end that they were going to die by the hand of the shinobi projecting the ki. This was accomplished by pushing the desire to kill through ambient chakra that every living being produced at varying levels, the more chakra you had the more you unconsciously projected. Those who were really powerful were by necessity forced to suppress their chakra emissions lest they injure those around them with the pressure of their ambient chakra. This was also similar to the reiatsu concept in Bleach. Ki was one of the useful forms of this unconscious chakra leakage, another could inspire confidence by forcing your own confidence into your ambient chakra, and so on and so forth with all the human range of emotion, even love to an extent but that would be opening a whole new kettle of fish.

When Naruto's seal was released, the full pressure of his unconsciously released chakra hit like a mountain being dropped from the sky. Judging just on the pressure the summoned monkey estimated Naruto's chakra reservoir to be four or five times that of the current Hokage putting him on par with the legendary Yondaime and possibly not too far behind the Shodaime. Although the previous Hokage's chakra reserves were only guessed at and had never been reliably measured so that could never be verified.

The point was that unless Naruto had hiked to Iwa the entire shinobi force of Konoha would still have felt that release. Even the civilians felt the pressure and they were generally oblivious to chakra usage unless it was to see an enormously flashy jutsu. It was a very good thing that Naruto hadn't been angry whatsoever during the release or the populous might have thought that the Kyuubi had broken free.

Naruto raced through the set of five handseals faster than he'd ever done handseals in his life. He slammed his right hand down into the ground screaming out the technique name.

His summon, who was now clinging to consciousness for dear life, scarcely heard the technique called out and once he thought he'd heard it immediately let go of the stretchy fabric of the facemask abruptly slamming a stopper into the venerable geyser of chakra. This was, of course, too little too late and the Sandaime was already headed full speed towards the surge outfitted in full battle armor and trailing three ANBU squads.

Upon their arrival the third Hokage was surprised to find that his personal summon had already beaten him there. Seeing Naruto relaxing with his back to one of the many rocks cradling a nearly unconscious young monkey summon, Sarutobi dismissed the ANBU assuring them that he would be fine and that the surge was probably a seal that had gone terribly wrong.

As soon as the last reluctant ANBU had left, shooting a fairly potent dose of ki at Naruto, Sarutobi turned to his summon and shot him a look that demanded answers. He received a helpless shrug denoting that the monkey king was as lost as his typical summoner.

"So Naruto, would you care to explain what just happened?"

"Yeah I suppose I can do that. It's like this ojiisan: I was trying your summoning scroll and the first time I called out this little tiny baby monkey, which of course I sent back right away because I didn't want to upset its kaasan you know. Anyway the second time I get this one here." Naruto, in a move that was quickly becoming habit, held up his second attempt at summoning by his tail. "We had a talk about some of the things that it meant to be a summon of the noble line of the ape clan and I found out that he'd been through the trials of adulthood and turned into what sounds like a wicked awesome staff but instead of congratulating him for doing something that no other monkey had done before they all but told him he was a freak. So I decided that I wanted to help him and because I think how he described his transformed state is awesome I offered to make him my personal summon. Apparently I can't just go ahead and do that though because of some agreement that I have to make with the ape clan nobles to keep the contract. He told me that because his staff form is so bizarre that the council of elders were considering moving him to the samurai branch or some such which in the end would mean I couldn't use him as my weapon. He mentioned that to change that or at least make sure that didn't happen in the first place I would either have to call forth the entire council of elders and convince them _or_ I could summon up the ape that could overrule the council. Since I'm told the council is noncombatant that would mean that I can't summon them which would mean that I had to go to the king.

"Our plan was to come way out here and summon Enma so that everyone would assume that I was at one of my normal training grounds overloading C-rank jutsus. As you noticed right away that didn't work out right. So that's why Enma is here.

"The reason the surge was so huge was because the limiter seal that I told you about was released to grant me the chakra needed to pull out a boss-level summon. The seal apparently either backlogs all the chakra that would normally be getting though or forces the chakra it's limiting back in on itself and forcefully expanding my coils. Either way I'm going to have to find a way to redo the seal but I think the answer might be to go back to a normal percentage based seal or to tie in a supply seal and link it to the other seals I'm designing for myself."

At this Naruto seemed to drift off thinking of possible solutions to his compounded excess chakra problems. He was broken from his contemplations by Sarutobi clearing his throat and gesturing to an amused looking Enma.

"Oh right! Do you think you could help out my friend with his problem and possibly give him a name so I have something to call him, Saru-sama?"

"I'm sure that we can work something out. It's not often that the level of raw power you just demonstrated is gathered in one place let alone one human and at so young an age. This bears watching and the ape clan would be foolish to turn away such a summoner for such a trivial matter. If your friend means so much to you perhaps you would like the honor of naming him?"

"I would be honored to name him but I don't know any of your traditions or any names that might be acceptable to you"

"Do not be worried about customs or traditions or such proper things. A name will come to you and when it does you will know that it is right."

Naruto seemed to drift off slightly before nodding to himself.

"His name will be Tokushu because that's what his is, unique"

"Hai, that is a good name for him. I shall leave him in your care until he has recovered enough for you to tell him his name. When you have told him his name, dismiss him so that we may go through the ceremonies that will make his name and place official and bind him to you as his personal summoner such that no other summoner may call upon him unless he should ascend to the title of monkey king." So saying this Enma dismissed himself back to the realm of summons presumably to inform the elders of this new development.

"Well Naruto may I be the first to welcome you into the sparse ranks of ninja who are capable of summoning high-level animals. I hope you live up to the responsibility that comes with carrying the ape clan contract. Just remember what your original purpose was in getting the ape contract." The Sandaime flashed through a short series of handseals in a blur too fast for Naruto to even begin to break down and disappeared in a swirl of leaves.

Naruto leaned back against the rock behind him once more and let his mind wander over the multitude of revelations and changes that today had brought.


	4. Chapter 3

Naruto was back in his favorite training spot. He had decided to call it a day after the summoning incident even though it was early and after a decent meal at the ramen stand and an early night to bed he was ready to go the next morning. This brought him back to his favorite training ground deep within the bamboo grove, furiously scribbling in a notepad usually found in civilian school supplies trying desperately to come up with a solution to his chakra overabundance. It was probably just passed 6am but Naruto knew that he didn't even need to show up to his team's meeting place until just before 10am so he figured that he had some time to try a couple things. He'd already replaced his custom seal with a standard percentage based one and had it set to suppress 85% of his total chakra, which he'd found to still put him amongst the majority of jonin.

He had already asked old man Hokage for some really advanced chakra control exercises that were specifically for people who had enormous chakra reserves. Upon finding out they were originally developed by Tsunade to keep her control nearly perfect despite her own sizable reserves, Naruto was now seriously considering shucking aside chakra from his seal to directly link to his wound regeneration if he could figure out how. Armed with these new techniques which he'd already tried with his mid-chunin level chakra he was confident that he would only ever lose control like the other day if he wanted to. With that in mind he'd changed the amount let though his custom seal to be that of a higher level chunin. He hoped that the expanded allowable capacity would mean that there would be less chakra being forced back into his coils causing expansion.

He'd just finished tying his custom seal to a supply seal for his resistance seal (which he had rechecked for possible downsides before applying) when he heard footsteps approaching him.

The owner of the footsteps was revealed to be Sakura. It seemed that waiting for their sensei with nothing to do in the mean time could only be partially solved by bringing reading material.

"You know you should really work on your stealth Sakura-chan I could hear you a full fifteen minutes before you actually showed up." They both chuckled slightly at that. Early on in experimenting with chakra augmentation they'd found that Naruto could actually hear heartbeats a good thirty yards away, so in theory Naruto could actually hear her when she was sleeping in her bed from here if he were capable of separating out the sound of her specifically.

"Right, the day I am capable of sneaking up on you while you're alert is the day I retire because I obviously cannot possibly get any better and I should quit while I'm ahead."

"Now, now, Sakura-chan that's not the kind of attitude to have. I am in no way incapable of being surprised or snuck up on, so that goal is a very poor one if it's all you want to achieve. And speaking of goals have you found or developed anything new on modifying muscle structure with those special self healing techniques?"

"Actually I think I'm pretty close on getting more dense muscles but the chakra requirements to make it permanent are insane. I think this might actually be the answer we were looking for because it would take a Sannin to do this just based on chakra requirements. If I had an unlimited source of chakra I'd be done already and moving on to more useful ijutsu, like the stuff you can use on _other_ people instead of just yourself."

"What do you know about chakra transfer, Sakura-chan? I ask because I just found that through a fairly serious oversight on my limiter seal I've just increased my reserves substantially. If you know an easy way for me to transfer it in a slow enough flow, you could go ahead and do the procedure. Obviously I'd want something in return but I bet it wouldn't be too much of a price to pay."

"Why don't you tell me the price and then I'll tell you if I know enough? If the price is reasonable enough it might be worth it to research transfer methods just so I can shortcut the chakra requirements."

"I would ask that you leave me a scroll where you write down how you did what you did. You offer the knowledge of how to do the enhancements in exchange for the ability to do them on yourself."

"That sounds like a fair trade as it would without a doubt take me years of nearly constant work to gather the reserves necessary and even then the procedure would probably leave me recovering from chakra exhaustion for weeks after. Do you want lots and lots of details or just a general overview or something in between?"

"I'm more concerned with the whys than the hows. Obviously I need to know _how_ you did it but I'd rather know _why_ you had to do one thing instead of another, or why it has to work the way you did it. You know me, never satisfied with just knowing how, I've gotta improve on it."

"That's agreeable to me as long as you note what you changed and why before you give me back the scroll, and you will be giving me back the scroll without making any copies." The last bit was actually accompanied by a small bit of ki, a rather pathetic amount when compared with what Naruto was used to dealing with but it conveyed the seriousness of the request quite well. Actually Naruto would have been offended at any lesser signs of possessiveness over an original technique. Sure it was based on an existing one, but anything you put together from scratch is something to be proud of and if it's something powerful, like this was shaping up to be, then pride was justifiably converted to rabid paranoid possessiveness.

"Of course, that goes without saying. I may be using your technique but I would never dream of stealing all your work, I'm not a fucking Uchiha after all." This comment earned Naruto a look that held a healthy mixture of relief and a glare that told him to suck a spiked cock and bleed to death over the insult to her crush. Naruto shrugged as if to say 'it's true everything the Uchiha has is stolen, even techniques willingly shown to him were stolen as opposed to practiced and then mastered', Naruto was getting good at saying a lot to Sakura with just a look. He assumed it was a hallmark of a good team, which would explain why he couldn't do it with either the teme or his lazy sensei.

"Okay, we've only got forty-five minutes till we're supposed to meet Kakashi-sensei and Sasuke-kun so we don't have time to start it now but I think I know how to do it. If we could meet up someplace quiet and sheltered we could do it tonight. I'll warn you though this is going to take hours and we'll both probably want to just fall asleep wherever we are, especially me. So I'd rather not do this outside at one of your training grounds." Sakura said with a look that overflowed with hope that he knew such a place.

"How important is this to you? Because if I skip team training and the mission today I can set up my apartment with chakra blocking seals during that time and we can do it there tonight. I could even send a Kage Bunshin in my place but you would have to make sure it wasn't dispelled. If you could verify that I'm sick or something I could sit out most of training and just help with the actual mission." Sakura nodded vigorously agreeing with that plan as she wanted to get these improvements done as soon as possible so she could begin getting used to them and learning more things to increase her value as a ninja.

"Right that's what we'll do then. Just let me finish up here and we can go." Sakura watched as Naruto finished using ninja wire techniques to embroider a series of seals into a strip of white silk before taking off his facemask and sewing the silk into the back of it.

Sakura noticed that with the way the seals were embroidered on the silk and into his facemask that Naruto could remove the seals in a succession, meaning he could choose which handicaps to use. She noted that the main chakra limiter was the last in line and thus the least likely to be removed. What Sakura didn't know was that Naruto had rearranged all the seal designs themselves so that a small burst of chakra to the correct seal could turn it off or on and that Naruto only had to take them off to adjust the magnitude by which they handicapped him.

Finished with his shinobi version of sewing, which Sakura reminded herself once again to come up with something she could trade for that skill, Naruto screwed his eyes up in concentration and there was a heat-like shimmer before two clones popped into existence. One of the clones quickly henged into a kunai and was stored in the other clone's kunai pouch on the chance that if the first clone was dispelled the second could take its place with the excuse of having used a quick kawarimi to get out of danger.

Naruto then cheekily saluted Sakura and bounded, well more like trudged quickly, away towards his apartment.

-- break --

Naruto was almost disappointed that he wasn't present in person for the D-ranked mission that his team had been assigned.

The reason for this what that they had been, once again, assigned to capture the Daimyo's wife's cat. This itself was a horrible mission but what happened during it was hilarious and while it was nice watching it second-hand through his clone's experience, Naruto felt there might have been something more to it had he been there.

The day had started out fine; there was the usual team training, which meant that they all sparred against each other. More specifically Sasuke would spar against Kakashi in hopes of awakening his Sharingan while Naruto and Sakura would stand around occasionally pretending to spar while knowing that until their current projects were completed that the sparing would do no good. This continued for about an hour before they headed to the Hokage tower, usually picking up something for lunch on the way.

Once assigned the cat retrieval mission that Kakashi felt special pleasure in making them accept time and time again, they kitted up with radios and non-lethal capture methods. Again this was all very regular.

What was not routine, was what happened to conclude the mission.

Kakashi proved that no matter how advanced a shinobi you are you are still capable of making mistakes.

Team 7 had caught up to the feline and was in the process of chasing it towards one of the more open clearings where they would have a better chance to catch it. Sasuke and Kakashi were chasing it throwing the occasional blunted kunai and shuriken to keep it on track towards the field. Unfortunately the cat had caught on to their game early and while it still wanted to avoid the flying objects of pain, it had begun to veer off course earlier and more often than usual and as such they had run out of blunted weapons being too busy keeping the cat on course to retrieve any of the previously thrown weapons.

The cat had apparently sensed this and made a break to the left, which was understandably Kakashi's side, given he only had his right eye functional it made sense to keep him on the side of the cat that he could see the most of. Kakashi had already anticipated this move based on a minor hesitation in the forward direction along with a slight twitch to the left telegraphing where the cat was going to go. Letting loose with a sharp kunai to where he expected the cat to be along with generous leeway in regards to the cat's speed, Kakashi expected that the cat would, at worst, run headlong into the ring on the handle.

What actually happened was the sharpened kunai effectively decapitating the bell bedecked calico. And as such Team 7 would go down as both famous and infamous. They would be worshiped by the older teams of genin who had had their fill of that mission. Conversely they would also get the never ending infamy of being the only team in living memory to fail a D-rank mission on account of their jonin-sensei.

Naruto was of the opinion that it was worth the black mark on his record just to be able to rub it into Kakashi's face that _Kakashi_ had failed the mission for them all whenever he got too cocky or arrogant in regards to his rank or ninja skills.

But for the present Naruto was finished with the seals that he'd placed on the doors, windows, walls, ceilings, and floors of his apartment. He figured they would be doing this in the bedroom sitting on the bed, but it never hurt to make sure that you didn't miss anything. The last thing he needed was to be interrupted halfway through what he was sure was an insanely dangerous medical procedure by curious ANBU ready to grab him for questioning without regard as to who might be depending on his help at the time.

Naruto had even gone so far as to clean his apartment so that it didn't look like a mixture of trash heap and study area. He could also honestly say that cleaning his room was the best workout he'd had to date.

With the completion of his resistance seal, everything was a workout, even breathing. The principle behind the seal was that it used chakra siphoned off his limiter seal to create a local aura that would resist his every movement; much like walking around underwater without all the buoyancy issues. In fact because that was the very idea that had inspired him to make the seal that was how it was adjusted. Setting null was nothing, just the resistance of air, setting one was the resistance found under two meters of water, setting two was twice that resistance, setting three was three time the resistance and so on and so forth. So it's easy to see that cleaning one's room if you were to be continuously resisted by a viscous fluid five times the density of water could be a rather strenuous workout.

Naruto took a seat on his couch and pondered how he was going to get enough control over his released chakra to suppress the natural aura before Sakura passed out due to the pressure. While doing this he absently started doing his new chakra exercises for practice.

The particular exercise he chose consisted of allowing his chakra to suffuse a very long length of bandage or wrapping and manipulating it using only the chakra you'd infused it with into shapes of increasing complexity. They suggested you start with shapes, just outlining them, before moving on to three dimensional objects. Things with sharp corners were the hardest as the wrappings didn't naturally form sharp edges. Naruto was currently working out a ball made of interlocking pentagons as practice for both visualizing the final form it would take, you couldn't make the pentagons separate from each other and put them together, and as good control practice for all the straight edges.

He had to admit that this type of exercise seemed like cheating to him because it wasn't all that different than his extensive practice with ninja wire. He'd been doing wirework since they brought up the uses and dangers of wire and puppetry in the academy. This guilt was squashed quickly with the memory that he was incapable of getting any of the others, even the reputed easier ones, to work at all without spiraling totally out of control.

Sakura knocked on the door when he was about half finished with it, which disturbed his concentration and thus lost him the shape. He got up to answer the door and let her in.

"Ne, Sakura? I've got some stuff to explain before we do this."

"What kind of stuff Naruto?" Sakura was beginning to get slightly nervous. Statements like that were generally followed by something important. With Naruto as the originator of such a statement, important might be an understatement. And as every kunoichi knows, the unexpected is generally unpleasant.

"The reason that I needed to set up chakra masking seals around my apartment is so nobody would notice the surge. Before you say anything to commend me, or otherwise, on making sure that no uninvited shinobi show up wondering what the surge was caused by, I need to tell you about how much the surge is going to be. You remember my chakra limiter of course, that's how we got started helping each other, what you didn't know was that the limiter was flawed and had a very unintentional side effect. Two weeks of having the seal force my chakra back on itself and back through my coils was apparently a very good way to increase my total chakra by several times what it was before the seal. I told you that I had high-jonin level chakra reserves before; I have Kage-level reserves now."

This statement absolutely floored Sakura. She was so shocked that she didn't hear Naruto continuing his explanation of what to expect. It wasn't that she didn't believe him, she did, it was that a seal was capable of multiplying someone's chakra reserves like that.

"Wait… what?"

"Sakura you can't use the seal to increase your chakra reservoir if that's what you zoned out thinking about."

"Why not?"

"Because you would end up tearing your chakra pathways to shreds by overloading them and in the event you didn't die from that you would most certainly never be able to control your chakra again."

"Then how come you're still alive and can control it?"

"Because I have a special condition where my wounds regenerate instead of normal healing, my coils just continually reformed. If it weren't for that I would be dead. The reason I'm alive is because of a fluke, if I were anyone else the seal would have killed me. In that light, it's probably for the best that I was the one who figured out the screw up."

"Oh, well in that case what did you need to tell me that referred to having that much chakra?"

"Okay, but listen this time. I know it sounds like I'm rambling but it does come to a point. When a ninja reaches Kage-level chakra reserves they are already used to concealing their subconscious presence, so without trying they suppress their chakra signature. Most ninja describe ki as an anger and hate so heavy that they can't move. This is actually literal. When a ninja releases their ki what they do is force themselves to stop hiding their chakra signature and add all their anger to it. When a ninja stops suppressing their chakra they begin to naturally release a haze or aura of chakra; that's how you find them, by following the aura to its center, but the strength of the aura determines the density and that in turn determines the force it exerts on its surroundings. When a Kage-level ninja stops suppressing their chakra the aura is so dense that it can actually break things but more important are the effects on nearby people. Those people who don't have a very high chakra level begin to feel like they are suffocating, which in a manner I suppose they are. I mention ki because you can use whatever emotion you are feeling most at the time and I needed to warn you that you will probably be overwhelmed by feelings that aren't yours for awhile.

"That said; what I need you to do is to flare your chakra as strong as possible right before I pull off my seal and keep doing so until I manage to drag my chakra aura back to myself. If that still isn't enough, it might help to go down on a knee or lay down.

"That was all I needed to warn you about. Now how is your part going to work? Just give me the basics so I know what to look for and what I should be doing."

"Okay. The way this works isn't to actually change the structure of anything on a really small level like trying to rewrite DNA or something. What I'm going to be doing is putting myself in a meditative state where I'm hyperaware of my body. Then I'm going to use healing-type chakra to encourage muscle growth in all the major muscle groups associated with fighting. I'm also going to be doing some reworking of my bones and ligaments too but you don't really need to know much about it. You will know it's working if you see light green chakra building around my muscles. Because I don't have a taijutsu style, I'm going to be increasing all the muscles I think I might need and fine-tuning them when I start using a specific style.

"Like you mentioned when we first started talking about this, I don't want huge bulging muscles so I can't just encourage growth and pour in chakra to make it happen. I am going to have to help structure them to be denser, which is why this is going to take hours. I'll have no muscle memory when I'm done so I'm going to have to relearn everything, including how to walk and use chopsticks. I'm going to need lots of help when I'm done because I won't be at all used to my new strength to I'll probably end up destroying a bunch of stuff and hurting myself quite a bit while I figure it out.

"Your part in all this, well in _getting_ to the part where you help me relearn to eat and move, is to concentrate your chakra to your hands and place them on the hara (navel, stomach) and the herutsu (heart) chakra points. I can then draw from your chakra as if it were my own as long as you keep molding it to your hands. It works best when it's skin to skin contact _**but**_ I don't want any perverted thoughts going through your head! I will still have my shorts and my bra on so don't get any ideas!"

Naruto's innocent look at this said: 'who me? No! Butter wouldn't melt in _my_ mouth. I'm not a pervert' and other such declarations of innocence too good to be real. As such he got a look back that clearly said: 'bullshit' and Naruto knew his innocent face would need more work. Actually it was probably because he was wearing a similar looking mask as their sensei's and that man read porn in public; not exactly the best connection to make when you're convincing someone you're not going to try anything perverted. Knowing he was beat and anything he said would dig him a deeper hole, he backed off.

"So, do you want anything to eat before you loose the ability to use chopsticks? It would probably be good to have some materials for your body to use constructing those muscles instead of just forming them out of chakra."

"Actually that sounds good. And for your information, I've been stuffing myself with lots of protein and other things that I'll need to make the muscles. After all you can't make something purely out of chakra and expect it to stay there. Increasing something you already have though, that's possible."

"Well I don't really have anything high protein, but I do have some omusubi in the fridge."

"That sounds wonderful. Where do you want me to put my stuff?"

"Anywhere you want as long as you remember where it is. I don't wanna be yelled at if you can't find it."

Sakura decided that the sort of decrepit looking couch would be the best place to put her satchel and equipment, which she quickly stripped it off and dumped in a heap off on one side. She then joined Naruto in his little half kitchen for two omusubi. When they were finished Naruto led the way into his bedroom, which Sakura noted was just as worn looking as the rest of his apartment. In fact Naruto didn't seem to have any new or even remotely new things in here at all.

The bedroom itself was about as basic as you could get. There was a bed pushed up against one wall with a window over it. Next to the bed was a small dresser that had a couple pictures on the top sharing space with a scroll, two kunai, and an alarm clock so damaged that looked to be built from scratch out of trash. In the wall parallel to the foot of the bed was a small closet with pitiful few outfits hanging in it. Sakura thought she saw two of those orange jumpsuits that he'd worn in the academy, two changes of the outfit he was currently wearing, and a couple civilian styled shirts. Naruto yanked the covers off the low-sitting bed and gestured for Sakura to sit or lie down or stand or whatever position she needed to be in. Sakura decided that it would be best to sit cross-legged on the center of the bed her back to the pillows.

"Alright Naruto, this is how I'm going to sit. I want you to sit behind me and reach around to cover the hara and the herutsu. Just let me get this shirt off and you can take your seal off."

Naruto barely held the smirk off his face at exactly how that sounded.

Naruto _was_ a pervert. Contrary to what everyone thought, Naruto didn't invent the Orioke no jutsu to combat perverts but rather as a belated excuse to keep looking at the fairer sex while they were nude. After all, how better to hide than to publicly profess the opposite?

However, Naruto wasn't without _some_ standards. And by his standards Sakura was too young to really derive any enjoyment from peeping on. She was barely an A-cup; excusable as she'd only just started to hit puberty, a ninja's lifestyle, while limiting how much the girls developed overall, tended to jumpstart the actual process, something to do with heavy use of chakra Naruto assumed. She was only eleven and that fact really put a damper on any enjoyment Naruto could have gotten out of the, totally out of context, thought that Sakura was undressing on his bed. And because he couldn't derive much enjoyment out of the experience he decided to lay some groundwork for later by being a gentleman and turning around while she pulled off her dress/shirt thing and adjusted whatever needed adjusting.

"Okay, you can turn back around now."

"As soon as you flare your chakra we can begin."

Sakura responded by forming the ram handseal and closing her eyes to concentrate. When Naruto felt the faint, barely noticeable to him, chakra signature and realized that the faint pink tinge he could see effervescing off her skin was as high as it was going to go, he sent a spike of chakra right through the limiter seal turning it off.

Sakura's eyes shot wide open as the pressure of Naruto's chakra hit her.

She could barely breathe! Her eyes were watering and every muscle in her body was trembling. Her mind was screaming for her to run from this enormous presence that was far too close to her. She could dimly hear inner-Sakura screaming something at her. As beads of sweat instantly formed on her brow, she was thanking Kami-sama that this presence held no menace, perhaps even some kindness. She thought that if the presence were angry there would be no way to survive and she would rather take her own life than face it in combat.

And then suddenly…

It was gone. Nothing left of the godlike presence she could have sworn was bearing down on her. She slowly realized that she was lying down on Naruto's bed, hair damp with sweat and she had no idea how she'd gotten there. A quick mental inventory told her that she had thankfully not wet her pants during the experience, though if she were honest with herself just a fraction longer and she probably would have.

She sat up and noticed Naruto standing beside the bed looking at her with concern. He looked like he was having a lot of trouble with something, or maybe he was frustrated by something. She saw that all the clothes that had been hung in the closet were now scattered about the room. She even detachedly noted that one of the kunai that had been setting on the dresser was now sticking in headboard up to its handle.

Then her mind jumped back into gear. _Holy SHIT! That's what he meant about chakra aura? I put everything I had into creating one of my own without totally exhausting myself and I bet he barely felt it. __**Damn straight! We couldn't do anything! We've got a long way to go if that's the type of power a ninja can wield.**_ Sakura nodded to herself and then realized that the expression on Naruto's face was probably him having trouble holding back his chakra. _Well we better help him with that by taking an ungodly amount of it away with our technique_ she chuckled to herself_._

"I'm alright Naruto; I just wasn't prepared for something like that. Come on sit behind me and gather _some_ of that chakra to your hands."

Naruto jumped into the bed as Sakura rearranged herself back into a meditative position. He got behind her and scooted forward until her back was against his chest. He reached around her and moved his hands to where he thought they should be before gathering chakra to them. Sakura was already falling into her trance when she noticed that two points of chakra that she would be using were out of place. It took her longer than it normally would have to work out that those two points were Naruto's hands and that all she had to do was move them. After some minor adjustments she resumed falling into the hyperaware state that most of the scrolls on self-administered ijutsu described.

--

To her great surprise she became very aware of her teammate's hands on her skin. She startled herself with the errant wish that she'd told him that he needed to be shirtless too, so she could've felt his bare chest pressing into her back. She quickly shook those thoughts aside though without so much as a speck of attention to the implications of that wish.

Upon going deep enough into the trance that she was able to feel her muscle structure, she began drawing her chakra and carefully converting it to the pale green healing chakra before sending it through her stomach and intestines to gather nutrients and then out to her limbs to begin the process of restructuring her muscles.

--

Naruto noticed the momentary pause Sakura made when she startled herself but he didn't know the cause and when she resumed meditating he thought there was nothing wrong. As far as ninja-related duties went this was not bad. He had originally thought that this wouldn't be very enjoyable due to Sakura's total professionalism and underdeveloped 'assets', but he was finding that this was very enjoyable.

Indeed if he weren't so sure that it would mess up the process and earn him a half-super-strength beating he might just move his right hand down a little to cup Sakura's surprisingly generous A-cup left breast. This thought quickly led to a very lecherous smirk and the thought of what he might find if his left hand were to migrate south from her hara.

Naruto quickly abandoned these thoughts as his blood began its inevitable journey south and the last thing he felt he needed was a full-super-strength beating.

He idly noticed that her right arm, starting at the fingertips, was beginning to glow the pale green he was told to expect. He also noted that whatever Sakura was using to measure "a lot" of chakra needed to be updated. If he hadn't been expecting to feel a drain, he wouldn't have even noticed. He was now actually eagerly awaiting the point that she would get to the more significant muscle groups and begin draining some real amount of his chakra. He was however resigned to the wait; after all it was probably going to be a very time-consuming project.

--

Sakura wanted to be meticulous in her upgrades. It just wouldn't do for her to have this wonderful super-strength and every time she tried to use it ripping a ligament, tearing a tendon, or causing minor stress fractures in her bones. To counter these eventualities, she was starting at the fingertips on her right hand and started compressing the hard outer layer of bone while simultaneously raising the calcium content and encouraging bone growth to replace missing diameter from the compression. She started moving back up her arm continuing the process having decided before she started that she would complete the process like a scanner rather than in stages; i.e. updating all her bones and then going back for the ligaments and then the muscles.

Once she started encountering ligaments and tendons she strengthened their connection to the bone and where feasible widened the contact surface. She moved up the tendons and ligaments strengthening the intercellular bonds. She began drawing ever-increasing amounts of chakra from Naruto as she began to get into areas of higher anatomical complexity and greater amounts of muscle, bone, tendon, and cartilage. When she reached her joints, she began multiplying the amount of cartilage between bones and increasing the amount of the low-friction fluid that allowed movement. The unfortunate, for her, Naruto would always think it looked fine; side effect was the slight but noticeable lengthening of her fingers, arms, legs, and toes.

About halfway up her forearm she ran out of usable sustenance from her stomach. With only a minor stab of disappointment she switched over to the small fat reserves in various places along her body and continued the process of healing and manipulating her muscles.

--

Naruto was beginning to regret agreeing to this. The novelty of holding his teammate in a pseudo intimate embrace had worn off around the thirty minute mark. She seemed to be nearly done with her right arm now and since he'd just checked the clock he knew that it had been roughly one hour and forty-five minutes since they had begun. The progress was obvious and drastic though not in a way that would be immediately apparent. Her muscles were becoming incredibly defined and it seemed to Naruto that if he had the inclination that he could trace out exactly how the muscles would look if there were no skin to hide them. It was obvious by now that she was constructing the muscles out of her body's natural reserves of fat because he could actually watch as smoothness given by healthy amounts of fat was burned away leaving hard lines outlining muscles.

Naruto began to worry that he might have to get her something to eat to continue this. Actually now that he thought about it that was probably a very good idea. With a moment of thought, he created a Kage Bunshin without handseals and ordered it to go to the store under henge and buy food and some of that mix to make those protein shakes that were supposedly great for muscle building.

This minor help done, Naruto settled back to watch the process anew. It was really quite something to see. Naruto had no trouble admitting that; indeed, he was very impressed. The actual healing and modification he assumed was concentrated in a five centimeter wide band of intense pale green that glowed fiercely as it crawled almost unnoticeably up her arm. He could tell that this was an unusually powerful ijutsu by the aftereffects. Beyond the obvious bodily modifications, the area affected actually continued to release wisps of pale green chakra like the small wisps of smoke rising from charred logs after a bonfire.

Quite unexpectedly his clone nudged his shoulder indicating his return and its forethought to bring an already mixed glass of the shake mix. _Damn, spaced out staring at those wisps of chakra again._ Naruto looked at his clone as it held out the glass to him.

"What the hell are you thinking? You know I can't take my hands off her to take that from you. You feed it to her you dumbass!"

Looking properly chastised the clone mounted the bed directly in front of Sakura and began puzzling out the problem of how to get her to drink. Deciding that odds were good on her doing it without needing to think about it the clone put the glass to her lips and tilted it a little bit to see if she would drink.

--

Sakura was nearly done with her upper right arm and focused almost entirely on the tendons and ligaments connecting the muscles of her shoulder to her humerus when she realized that there was something sliding down her throat. A quick pause in her healing and a shift of focus she noticed that it was a protein shake and she began to contemplate thanking Kami for Naruto.

She quickly tossed this disturbing thought out of her head and began concentrating on her arm again.

It wasn't long until she was up past her shoulder and had followed the correct muscles and tendons to their anchors in her chest. She decided to skip her torso for now in favor of her left arm. Starting again at the fingertips she wondered how much time had passed since she began this. She was shifting from her metacarpals to her carpals when she noticed that she was going much faster this time. This of course prompted momentary panic as she assumed that she was doing something wrong, she countered this by pausing and double checking her progress. When she had assured herself that she was doing everything right, she resumed her progress making sure to gather sustenance from the protein shake that Naruto had somehow poured down her throat.

Sakura made amazing progress right back to where she had stopped in mirror on her right arm. She decided that it might be time for a break to relax her concentration before she attempted her legs. She released the medical chakra she was molding and slowly started to come out of her meditative, hyperaware state.

--

Naruto watched in amazement as Sakura's left arm was done in forty-five minutes as compared to the two and a half hours that her right had taken. He took note that the pale green chakra had totally died off leaving only the wisps left and that Sakura had stopped drawing chakra. He assumed that she must want a break because although her upper arms and shoulders had taken what even Naruto had deemed a significant amount of chakra she still had a long way to go before she even came close to drawing as much as she'd implied while explaining the technique. Once she began stirring from her stationary position Naruto stopped channeling chakra to his hands and removed them so he could lean back on them in a more relaxed position. It was probably this action that contributed to Sakura's first reaction upon fully exiting her meditative state.

--

Sakura blinked several times in reaction to seeing from her eyes as opposed to visualizing the part of her she was concentrating on as had been the case for several hours now. There was this odd green tinge to the lower part of her vision that wouldn't go away and Sakura wondered if it were possible to use so much healing chakra for so extended a period that you would actually burn its affects into you. This theory went out the window upon looking down.

Sakura screamed.

The original idea was to see how her arms looked after the treatment.

She forgot about that idea when she saw the light green chakra still rising off her arms, more intense on her left arm and her upper right arm and shoulder.

She followed her first instinctual reaction to seeing such a thing and tried to lurch away from it. She ended up with her back to Naruto's chest once again, but this time she was hyperventilating and her eyes were darting from one arm to the other. She suddenly thought that maybe her arms would now be useless and promptly broke down crying turning her head to partially burry her face in Naruto's shirt.

--

Naruto was totally bewildered. He had no idea what to do. He had seen Sakura blink several times before looking down at her arms, but after that he had no idea what was going on. Apparently the sight of her arms had done something to her because she screamed. _That_ he could handle, he had been downright freaked out with he'd first seen that too but he had already been so far out of his depth that he'd just assumed that it was okay. But now she was _crying_ _uncontrollably_ into his shirt, gasping in huge breaths and was basically working herself up into a fine fit but he had never been very good with tears. So, he did the only thing that made sense to him.

SMACK!

The tears stopped instantly. The gasping turned to a held breath. Her face, forcibly turned the other way, now turned to look right back at him.

"Are you calm now?"

She nodded.

"Can you tell me what's wrong?"

She opened her mouth several times and nothing came out.

"Your arms have been doing that smoking green chakra thing since you started. I figured it would be okay; given how much healing chakra you were using, it was bound to leave quite a large amount of residual chakra behind. It has been tapering off slowly and soon I imagine it will stop. Is that what you're worried about?"

She nodded again before looking thoughtful.

"Well if you stopped for a break from concentrating for well over three hours then I suggest you take your mind off it. Do you want another protein shake?"

She nodded.

Naruto reached over to his bedside dresser and picked up another full glass and held it in front of her.

"This is a plastic cup so you won't be damaging anything that I really need if you grab too hard, but I thought it might be good if you would try to do this yourself."

Sakura looked at the cup then looked at her arms before her right arm jerked up with almost blurring speed. She barely got it stopped before she hit Naruto in the face.

"Um, how about you do this one. I don't think I could handle anything that can spill just yet." She blushed at her own helplessness before letting gravity drop her arm back to where her upper body had dragged it when she'd lurched away. Naruto just nodded in consent to helping her drink. He held the cup to her lips before tipping it so that she could drink. She drank greedily until it was gone before grimacing at the offensively fake chocolate taste.

"Do you think that you're going to be able to finish tonight?" Sakura looked thoughtful for a minute.

"I should be able to finish the modifying portion but there's no way I'll be able to do a mission tomorrow. If I'm having this much trouble grabbing a cup, imagine what I could do with a paintbrush."

Naruto burst out laughing at the mental image of Sakura accidentally throwing a whitewash-covered paintbrush over her shoulder to sail across the village and hit one of the carved Hokages in the eye. He even completed the image with a blushing Sakura looking sheepish.

"I can make an excuse for you or take you home once we're done so you can make the excuse yourself when we come to find you. With all of your medic training I imagine that you can fake an illness convincingly."

Sakura nodded. She seemed thoughtful for a bit; then tried to sit up. Naruto helped her up into a mockery of the same position she was in before. He found it surprisingly difficult to move her arms before he told her to just relax.

"Your precious Sasuke-_kun_ is going to need to get a lot stronger if he is ever going to give you a massage. Unlikely as the event is, if it ever does happen he'll never be able to push hard enough to make a difference. I sincerely hope you aren't a normally tense person, the knots are going to be murder." Naruto chuckled as Sakura's face cycled through several different shades of blush that he interpreted as: anger for insulting her crush, a mixture of embarrassment and lust, and indignation at the implication of being a stressful person.

"Do you think you could hurry this up? I'm getting cramps from just sitting around awkwardly hugging you. If we were actually _doing_ something I wouldn't complain but this is about as intimate as a handshake."

"Naaar_uuuuut__**oooooo**__!!_"

"Geez, don't get your panties in a twist. I was just trying to lighten the mood." Naruto grumbled a little as Sakura calmed slightly. "But seriously, if you could hurry up that'd be great."

Sakura realized that screaming at the person you were depending on to feed, transport, and lie for you was probably not a good idea and with a monumental act of self control managed to keep her complaints internalized. If by internalized you meant mumbling violently in a low whisper… which is exactly what Sakura did.

Pushing aside her anger she soon was back in her meditative state and again momentarily hyperaware of Naruto's hands on the bare parts of her chest and stomach. Again she found the two inexhaustible sources of chakra that denoted the placement of Naruto's hands and she began her ijutsu again starting at the tips of her toes on her right foot.

--

Naruto sighed as he saw the pale green light start again at the tips of Sakura's toes. He looked out the window and noticed that the sun was setting over the Hokage monument and he settled in to watch that while it was there.

Long before he was ready the sun had set and Sakura was barely up to her ankle.

As everyone who knows Naruto knows: a bored Naruto is a dangerous Naruto. In this case though, his mind wasn't bent towards pranks or destruction of any kind but rather a way to make the hours he would surely be enduring bearable. His chakra covered hands just happened to catch his attention. He began to think of his horrible chakra control, which inevitably led to him thinking of ways he could possibly improve it. He was running though the half a dozen ways he knew to improve control and wondered which he could possibly accomplish while maintaining a semblance of a constant amount of chakra in his hands.

Naruto tilted his head to the side to better ponder the problem; much like a puppy would when you tell it you have no more treats and it contemplates how to get more anyway. This action caused the bells in his hair to jingle, which he might have ignored as was typical now but in his boredom he was so desperate for something to do that they provided inspiration.

If one could float a leaf over their forehead it stood to reason that one could perform other chakra exercises on their head. This of course applied to the rest of the body too Naruto realized but he was only concerned with his head at the moment. Still he filled that tidbit of chakra control theory away for later. Now though he was going to try to mix a whole bunch of exercises together.

He was going to attempt to manipulate his hair using chakra like he would while using his wires but this time using tenketsu in his head to release the chakra like in he would leaf floating, if he were capable of leaf floating that is. The eventual goal of this exercise would be to play a song using the bells in his hair.

After nearly fifteen minutes practice with his clone holding a small mirror to help him locate the spikes with bells, he could now ring the tallest one in the middle of his head on command. The smile at this accomplishment nearly split his face. His joy at his success caused a spike in chakra to his hands which earned him an involuntary twitch from Sakura which brought him back to the task at hand.

--

Had Sakura been able, she would have chosen now to let out a forceful sigh. She was now done with her right leg and if things kept going this slowly it would be time for Naruto to go meet their team before she was done. She was grateful for the two further protein shakes Naruto's clone had administered. She'd noticed another surge of chakra through his hands just a little bit ago and she wondered if he'd created more.

She hoped he had created another clone or so. He needed something to keep him occupied and with both of his hands immobile there weren't a lot of options.

She shook off these thoughts and started on her left leg. As she expected, this leg was going much faster than her right one, she might finish this one within an hour.

--

Naruto was lamenting his total lack of knowledge in regards to lullabies.

All the songs he knew were decidedly beyond his skill level to play with the eighteen bells in his hair. It wasn't that he didn't think that he had the range of notes to do so, he did; it was just that he couldn't for the life of him get two bells ringing at once.

After he'd figured out how to wiggle an entire spike of hair it was just a matter of finding the other bell toting spikes on his head. Now he could ring any of the bells on his head by either sight in a mirror, if it were pointed out to him, or more recently by the tone it made when rung, the note needed to, theoretically, play a song.

He decided that until he could ring multiple bells at a time, there was really no reason to lament his lack of easy songs to play. If he couldn't ring two or more bells at a time, then it wasn't worth it to ring them at all. It's neither threatening nor impressive to play 'twinkle, twinkle little star' with the bells in his hair. Now if he could get a recognizable version of Evanescence going, that would be downright eerie with a voice projection jutsu on it when you were sneaking up on someone.

Grinning at his new way to mentally scar some more of the people who were always glaring at, insulting, and generally expressing their hate of the Kyuubi towards him, he redoubled his efforts to get two bells ringing at a time. He created another clone to go find his Evanescence CDs and start playing them on shuffle with his Hush Sound and 30 Seconds to Mars CDs for variety.

--

Sakura had finished her left leg.

This meant that she was done with all her extremities. This also meant that she needed to start on her torso. As she thought about her ribs, vertebrae, shoulder blades, and pelvis, she realized that she was going to need some milk. Just as she was about to come out of the trance to ask for some, she noted something else being poured down her throat. Lo and behold it was the exact white liquid she needed.

This time she really did thank Kami-sama for Naruto.

This action was immediately followed by an intense uneasiness, like the one that you get for doing something so distinctly against the norm that you feel totally ostracized, even when nobody has seen you or condemned you. She then examined her actions again and amended her thanks to include the thought that if her Sasuke-kun were helping her he would have done the exact same thing, but probably sooner in anticipation of her needing the calcium it provided. That made the strange feeling mostly disappear.

--

Naruto would have loved to jump up in down in a wild victory dance screaming at the top of his lungs. He couldn't do that due to his duty to the female in his arms. He settled for a slightly more restrained victory dance preformed vicariously through the clone that had put on the music at a soft volume. His need for a victory dance sated, he decided that Sakura shouldn't be the only one privileged to eat and subsequently sent one of his two clones to the kitchen to make him some food.

Having figured out the trick to ringing multiple bells at a time, he and the other clone quickly pulled the CD player over to the bedside dresser and queued up 'Weight of the World' on repeat to see if they could figure out the bell parts.

When his second clone returned, Naruto and his first clone were rewinding and playing the same five seconds of song over and over again with Naruto trying different bell combinations as the clone marked the parts of those combinations that sounded very close to the actual bells.

The mutual decision to take a break to eat the sandwich the second clone had brought was easy to make once the first combination had been figured out to as close as they could come.

They would have to look into some properly tuned bells in the future. It wouldn't do to be threatening someone using the voice projection technique and be casually informed that they were out of tune and the actual song didn't really sound like that. Naruto didn't know how many other shinobi listened to Evanescence but he liked the band, so it stood to reason that there was at least one other shinobi who did. By Murphy's law if there were one person that liked Evanescence enough to know if Naruto had been off-key, then Naruto would be guaranteed meet him in a battle where Naruto would be using the technique in an attempt to scare his opponent into making a mistake.

Naruto checked on Sakura again and was shocked to find that she had nearly completed her left leg. He remembered that she had said something about messing with her bone structure and he figured that with all the extremities done she was probably hurting for calcium. He ordered the former sandwich-maker back to the kitchen to get a glass of milk. On its return it jumped onto the bed and proceeded to pour the milk between Sakura's partially opened lips.

Naruto was genuinely glad that Sakura didn't seem to need any prompting to drink. He could only imagine how long this would be taking if she needed to stop to consume food.

As it was the green chakra could be barely seen shining through the skintight shorts she was wearing and Naruto noticed that it was beginning the final traverse up her torso. _Thank Kami-sama! She's almost done._ Naruto noticed that her torso seemed to be going much faster than her extremities. _That doesn't seem right; I hope she's not neglecting anything just because she doesn't think she'll use it. Although, it is mostly organs in there so that's probably part of it. I know I wouldn't wanna mess with my organs._

The green chakra had nearly reached the hara when it paused for a bit. Naruto thought this was odd, but paid it no mind. At least he paid it no mind until it reached his hand and something happened that he really didn't know how to deal with.

--

Sakura was quickly moving up her torso. While her torso was much bigger than either her arms or legs, she was finding that it was mostly filled with things she didn't want to mess with. For instance, having already done the muscles in her butt when she was finishing up her legs there really wasn't a lot to do besides strengthen her pelvis and minimally adjust the few other muscles in her pelvis that she really didn't think she was going to need to be super strong.

She quickly filed those muscles away under the 'Do not open until puberty' folder. Though on reflection, that folder was quickly approaching its 'open by:' date.

She supposed that this trance was a very good thing because while she was in it Naruto wouldn't see her blush furiously at having _those_ types of thoughts running rampant through her mind.

With a mental slap to the forehead she moved on toward her abdominal cavity to start work on her abs and the other muscles that ultimately allowed her to bend her torso around. While she was moving up she realized that she was going to be passing Naruto's hand where it rested above her hara.

She paused for awhile to get the exact feel of his chakra so she could try to limit his interference in the process. She eventually decided that the only way to make sure his chakra didn't inadvertently screw up the process was to drag all the necessary chakra from the hand resting on her herutsu and expel enough healing chakra to negate the chakra of his left hand.

She moved on again and as soon as she reached the hand above her hara she implemented her plan. That was exactly where things went horribly wrong.

The healing chakra she expelled into his hand to prevent interference was siphoned straight into his hand.

A person's chakra was supposed to reject other chakras not accept them without resistance, though it was a possible explanation as to why Naruto was so very abysmal at genjutsu detection and use. There was no reason that his body should be so readily accepting her healing chakra. A little worried about this new development and slightly frightened by the suddenly wildly fluctuating chakra levels in his hands she pushed past the affected area as quickly as she could and redoubled her speed to get this whole thing done.

--

When the wide green chakra band intersected with his hand the green chakra flared. This wasn't bad, what was bad was how it suddenly shot up his arm, multiplying in magnitude and running unbridled and unchecked over his entire body.

Understandably Naruto was a little freaked out.

He grew much more afraid when the green reached his own hara and red chakra bubbled up and began mixing with the healing chakra to create a dark slate grey. The newly colored chakra moved out from Naruto's hara and washed over his entire body before dying out at his fingertips, the tips of his toes, and the tips of his hair.

Naruto waited with bated breath to see if there had been any obvious effects to the chakra surge. When it became apparent that even though he was sure something had happened, there were no blatant changes he relaxed some.

He noticed that he had almost lost control of the chakra he had been feeding to Sakura. He was very thankful that she had been at least partially correct in that she'd used about half of his chakra and he didn't have to worry too much about harming her if he lost control of suppressing his chakra. He stabilized his chakra output to his hands and took note of where Sakura was.

The green chakra was about to disappear into her sports bra and he confirmed that he wasn't horribly damaged by seriously wondering if there was any way for her to increase the size of her bust while she was altering the muscles there.

A very lecherous grin stuck itself over his face as he pondered mentioning it to his teammate. With any luck she would mess it up and forget to stop herself developing naturally and she would end up with a rack like the main woman in the first Icha Icha book. He snickered to himself and sent his kitchen clone to go get more protein shake and another glass of milk. Maybe she would do the size expansion on her own, after all weren't women supposed to be sensitive about that?

When the clone had returned with the drinks and had administered them to the girl between Naruto's legs, all three Naruto's stared with high hopes at Sakura's bra clad breasts.

--

Sakura had reached her chest before Naruto's chakra stabilized. She hoped that he was okay. She resolved to make the rest of the process as quick as possible so she could make sure that he was okay.

She had reached about where the bottom of her bra was when she felt more liquid coming down her throat. She was thankful that he had given her some more materials to work with as it would make the process go faster. She redoubled her efforts and continued on before she realized that there was yet another hand in her way.

Sakura reasoned that since Naruto had recovered from whatever had happened the last time she had done this she could probably get away with doing the same thing she had done with the hand on her hara. She set up for the same thing and tried to get though it as fast as possible.

--

The three Narutos sitting around Sakura staring at her boobs were sorely disappointed when nothing significant happened to them after the glowing green band passed above the bra.

This acute disappointment stemming from having their collective hopes dashed, blinded them to the danger of a repeat of what had happened at Sakura's hara.

Thus the real Naruto was taken totally by surprise when it happened again. The green chakra raced across his right arm until it suffused his entire body. This time was different from the last time though. Instead of the seal holding back the Kyuubi converting the chakra and going back through his body, this time all the chakra gathered at Naruto's herutsu before changing color.

The now deep aqua chakra flowed across his body to all his extremities and rushed back to create and incredibly intense ball directly over his herutsu before exploding back across his whole body once more and finally fading.

Like the dark grey chakra before it, the aqua chakra flowed through him and dissipated leaving only the intermittent wisps to effervesce off his body.

By the time Naruto had regained control; Sakura had moved up her neck and was speeding across her head. Apparently she didn't want to do much to her head either. Naruto guessed that she was only strengthening her skull somewhat but decided that it was possible for her to be improving her senses while she was there and his thoughts were confirmed when he saw the green chakra lingering and intensifying around her eyes, nose, and ears.

--

Sakura was done.

She relaxed almost totally before she realized there would be enough time to do that once she was out of this blasted trance.

Thanks to the stupid trance she knew more about her body than she ever wanted to. In fact, by doing this she had almost taken all the surprise out of puberty. Because she knew exactly how much time until her growth encouraging cartilages stopped dividing and unfortunately that meant that she knew basically how tall she would end up being. She also knew lots of other seemingly minor little details that she really could have done without. Like about when she could expect to have her periods stabilize into a regular cycle and other such unspeakable things.

Thoroughly disgusted from her ordeal she surfaced from her trance to see two clones of Naruto staring directly at her.

It took all her willpower to stop herself from jerking back. Her exhausted mental state probably helped with the shock.

"Did it work Sakura-chan?"

"Yeah, I think it did. I need to sleep. What time is it? Are you okay? I noticed that something happened when I passed your hands."

"I'm fine, it was just something that surprised me is all. It's nearly 4:00 in the morning; I'm going to just stay awake because there's no point to going to sleep when I'll have to get up in an hour or two anyway and I might sleep through my alarm which would be really bad cause they would come looking for us and find us both here. I'm going to take you home around 7:00 if that's okay with you and you think that I won't get caught."

"That sounds great Naruto. My tousan leaves to work at his shop at 6:30 so he will be gone and my kaasan usually sleeps till 7:30 before she gets up to help my ojiisan with his seat on the council." Naruto nodded and moved from behind her back allowing her to lie down.

"Sleep well, do you want me to wake you up before I take you to your house or just let you sleep if I can?"

"It might be better if you woke me up. I wouldn't want to wake up halfway there, overreact and hurt you." Naruto nodded again and left Sakura in the bedroom to fall asleep.

-- break --

When he was younger Naruto had often played pranks on the Haruno seat of the council. He'd stopped this not long after he started for several reasons, one of the most prominent was that it was no challenge.

With all the shinobi clans on the council who made his life difficult, Naruto had gotten very good at using stealth he wasn't expected to have to leave token retribution for all the slights against him. When he turned his skills on the civilian portion of the council it had been a monumental bore. The Haruno especially because they slept like the dead and he could waltz or even tap-dance into their clan complex to tattoo 'Naruto's bitch' to their foreheads and they would all sleep though it.

Naruto found that Sakura was thankfully the exception to the rule when she woke as soon as he'd touched her. But getting her back into the compound was ridiculously easy. He left her on her futon with a nightgown slipped over her shorts and bra as she didn't trust him to not do something perverted when she couldn't reliably deck him.

He thought that was the least of her problems. Movements that used to come without thought could only be preformed with plenty of warning and long deliberation.

They had stopped outside of Naruto's apartment to try to get her to walk a little way. Fifteen minutes, a dozen falls, and twenty steps further Naruto had given up and raced to her house holding her bridal style. After sneaking her in and wringing a promise out of her to start practicing to walk and dress herself as soon as her kaasan verified that she was sick and left for her job, Naruto took off to a deserted training ground to practice his new taijutsu style.


	5. Chapter 4

It had been a week since Sakura's self-operation and Naruto had decided that monkey kung-fu was just really advanced brawling. He'd been learning the finer points of how to hit someone while putting more force into it. They hadn't even moved on to kicks yet, they were still working on punches.

Naruto would admit that he was getting better, but he was throwing thousands of punches a day and getting smacked upside the head when he didn't do them right.

He remembered when he'd first summoned the ape that would be training him in the monkey style of kung-fu. The first thing the big, scarred monkey-sensei had done was disabuse Naruto of the notion that he knew anything about the martial arts.

_-flashback-_

_Naruto stood off to the side of a genin training ground that hosted a plethora of taijutsu training aids. He nodded to himself as he surveyed the training ground. He was moving a lot easier after that funny backlash from Sakura's ijutsu and he hadn't adjusted the resistance just yet. He figured that he would need to be able to move with relative ease since he was just starting out._

_Naruto bit his thumb and summoned Tokushu to the field to ask him who he needed to summon for taijutsu training. He knew he succeeded when a black blur flew out of the plume of smoke and attached himself to his face._

"_Thank you, thank you, !" Naruto was now struggling to get Tokushu off his face, but when the thing you're trying to move can grip you with five limbs and is determined to hang on that tends to be a fairly difficult task._

"_Yes, you're welcome! Now get off my face!" Of course this came out rather muffled as Naruto was yelling into a rather fluffy stomach._

"_So, what did you summon me here for? Are we gonna fight a really huge battle? Where are all the bad guys?" At this point Tokushu was looking around over Naruto's head and trying vainly to see through his bells._

"_We're not going to be fighting anyone for a long while yet. I don't even know how to use you. Considering how unusual you are I doubt that anyone knows how to use you but I have to have a base to make stuff up with. On that note, who should I be summoning for taijutsu training?"_

_Naruto began to get slightly worried when the black-furred, kimono-clad monkey leaned back and gave him the evilest smile Naruto had ever seen._

"_Oh, you definitely want to call sensei." Naruto arched an eyebrow at this. He was pretty sure that he needed a name to summon an ape he hadn't seen before._

"_How much chakra am I going to need to summon 'sensei'? Is that his name?"_

"_Of course his name isn't 'sensei' but he never tells his name to anyone unless they've completed his training and by then all his students just call him 'sensei' anyway. He's probably a mid-level summon but you can't call him out for battle, he won't fight. Something about not being able to risk resources or similar."_

"_Alright, __**Ape Summoning arts: Sensei**__" Naruto yelled out as he bit his thumb and ran through seals throwing the equivalent chakra of a high C-rank level jutsu. There was a poof of smoke and the evil smirk worn by Tokushu was enough confirmation for Naruto and he rocked back on his heels to assess his new sensei._

_When the smoke cleared, Naruto could see how this particular ape had gotten to the position he was in. Naruto had seen lots of competent taijutsu fighters, he lived in a ninja village he would have to be blind to have not, and this ape looked like he could take them all… at the same time… blindfolded._

'_Sensei' was almost totally white. He stood a head taller than Naruto but hunched over and held himself loose as if to move in any direction with a nanosecond of notice. The only places he wasn't pure snow white was his face which was the dark brown skin one might associate with a gorilla, and all the myriad of dark brown scars that traced out a hard youth lived though in a nearly constant state of aggression. His eyes were a mud brown and might have looked harmless if it weren't for the slight red shine in the pupils that suggested an extreme bloodlust when roused. He wore a black gi as if to offset the silver hair of age with a wide red sash to belt it closed. His demeanor virtually screamed 'Fuck off' and Naruto thought that this was either going to be great, or the worst experience he had ever the misfortune to stumble upon._

"_So you're the new summoner aye?" Naruto decided to be respectful for once in his life._

"_Hai, that's correct Saru-sama."_

_This of course blew up in his face._

"_Great another fucking pansy-ass." Naruto didn't even think, he just responded._

"_Now look here you old-as-fuck dipshit! If I summoned you here that means I'm working on it and you have absolutely no idea of what I can do!"_

_This seemed to take the old monkey off guard. This was immediately followed up by a drastic increase in the intensity of the red gleam in his eyes._

"_Is that so? Well now, we'll just have to test that won't we?" The smile that accompanied that statement was almost enough for Naruto to wet himself._

_--_

_The next hour was perhaps the most painful thing Naruto had ever experienced bar nothing. Not even the villagers' beatings, where they used knives and bats and other unpleasant paraphernalia, could come close to the pain inflicted by one old ape who seemed to take great pleasure in Naruto's swift healing. The reason that the old ape so loved Naruto's healing was that it meant Naruto could stand up more often to get beat back down._

_They were coming up on an hour and fifteen minutes and Naruto had totally blown off his team meeting. It wasn't like Kakashi was there yet anyway. He was seriously considering not going at all despite it being a legitimate excuse to get away from the homicidal monkey, but he wasn't going to give the old ape the satisfaction of beating him._

_As Naruto dragged himself up to his knees, again, and spat out a mouthful of blood, again, he knew that there was no way for him to beat this ape. His only option now was to somehow force a draw. He just couldn't see how, 'sensei' was too good. He'd even used jutsus to try to even it up and after sensei had swatted his __Kage Bunshin__ aside like they were annoying gnats he'd told Naruto that if he used another jutsu he would never teach him anything._

_Naruto struggled to his feet and stood there, feet wide apart, swaying unsteadily. Tokushu had long since told him to stay down and Naruto had told him that if the little monkey had ever suggested something like that again Naruto would never summon him again. He tried to bring his arms up into a guard position that he'd copied badly from the standard academy taijutsu but he just didn't have the strength. Realizing that he couldn't even block anymore he stood waiting for sensei to come at him and beat him to within an inch of his life once more._

"_Well now, are we done?"_

"_I'll never surrender or give up if that's what you mean. You're going to have to come over here and beat me to death if that's what you're looking for."_

"_Good. Now we may begin. You will call me sensei, not Saru-sama or any other ridiculous title. When I feel you have mastered what I have to teach you I will tell you my name just as the masters of old with their students. Be warned, I will not teach you taijutsu."_

"_I will learn whatever you would teach me." Naruto said after a moment's contemplation._

"_Then when you have dragged your sorry carcass over to that log I will begin teaching you the basics of monkey kung-fu."_

_Naruto, still pondering what exactly the difference between a taijutsu style and kung-fu was, dragged himself slowly over to the fallen tree sensei had indicated. Once he'd sat down with his back to the tree, the lecture began._

"_What I will teach you is not a taijutsu style. A taijutsu style is a series of forms called katas that you memorize and apply in battle. You are deemed proficient or even good by the complexity of your most powerful kata. Monkey kung-fu is a total lifestyle. You will learn to change the way you think, the way you move, and the way you act, to become like a monkey. You seem to favor speed and strength. I will teach you control for your speed and precision for your strength. I will teach you subtlety and when to use it. I will teach you flexibility and how it is sometimes best to bend around your obstacles rather than crash right through them._

"_There are five styles of monkey kung-fu; you will start with __tatsu no tetsusaru__. It will fit best with how you are now."_

_-end flashback-_

So now Naruto was relearning how to punch. As he worked through the handseals for a summoning he hoped today they might move on. Little did he know that today his wish would be answered in a way that he would wish it hadn't.

"Good morning sensei," was the typical response to the cloud of smoke generated by Naruto's summoning jutsu. The elderly ape just nodded to him and motioned with a barely detectable jerk of his head to the log Naruto had been punching all week.

Naruto stepped up to the log. He was tired of this exercise and he wanted to move on already. Unconsciously focusing his desire to destroy the log with his punch, Naruto let loose with his right fist putting all the little, subtle changes into his punch as he'd been taught.

To his nearly overwhelming surprise the log yielded in a crunch that left his fist encased centimeters deep in the wood and discharged a cloud of splinters and sawdust from the back of the log in line with the direction of his punch. So shocked was he that he numbly left his fist in the log.

In Naruto's life the only thing that can properly bring someone out of the mental overload kind of shock is something that is magnitudes greater in shock value. This particular instance it was the dry, gravelly chuckling he heard from the general direction of his sensei.

His sensei was laughing.

This totally shut him down for a minute, but was handy in rebooting him much faster than he would have come out of the shock of completing the punching exercise. As soon as he regained his senses Naruto whirled around, painfully wrenching his fist out of the wood, and stared mouth hanging open at his sensei.

"Much faster than expected boy. You have now realized that you need to mean it! We can now begin the style of tatsu no tetsusaru. As the name suggests you are to become like an iron monkey, able to slough off the heaviest and most devastating blows without moving or changing. That is the basis of the style. We will start with teaching you how to take a hit and redistributing the force throughout your body and into the ground. To do this your stance must be perfect, if you are not braced correctly you will shatter like a faulty statue."

"Um, what does redistribute mean again?"

Sensei paused, shook his head in exasperation, and began running Naruto through some fairly heavy theory on stances and the ideal positions for distributing most of the force straight into the ground. Of course the best way for Naruto to learn anything was by attempting it, so in light of his pupil's preferred mode of education sensei decided to beat on Naruto for hours until he had started to use the correct stances and reactions to various attacks.

Naruto was finding that sensei was correct in that the style he was learning was not about katas and how they were strung together. Katas seemed to imply that there was only one way to stand or move to accomplish something, this was probably what the Sharingan used to predict movement, but what Naruto was learning was the theory behind movements, attacks and blocks. How he applied said theory was entirely up to Naruto, meaning he kept his treasured unpredictability.

Sensei explained further that all the theory he was learning would be useless unless he were able to perform the moves and had the experience to know when to use them. That was the value of katas apparently. Any idiot could practice a kata until it took no thought and then use it to great effect but you really had to know what you were doing to fight with just one move at a time. Once a fighter was experienced enough they could use their instincts to link up single movements, strikes and counterstrikes in seemingly random combinations to serve the same purpose as a kata would but with much greater effect, efficiency and control.

After making sure that Naruto knew what he was doing, Sensei gave Naruto a firm warning to continue to improve his punching and kicking and dismissed himself back to the summon realm.

-- break –

It had been a month since Naruto had passed the punching exercise and in the interim he had mastered the ability to use both legs and his left arm to the same devastating effect as his right. He arrived back at his apartment from another long session of having the correct reactions beaten into him and sighed in relief as he allowed his special version of the henge to fall. He gazed in the mirror lingering on the changes that had required him to use the henge constantly whenever he went out.

His features had slowly started to change ever since the incident with Sakura and while she had the excuse of being sick for several days to explain her changes and apparent lack of coordination when she resumed missions, Naruto doubted very much if there was any excuse that would be acceptable for his own changes.

The soft tissues had been the first to change and Naruto was glad that they had changed as fast as they did because it put him on his guard for other changes that would have been slow enough to pass unnoticed to him. The first and perhaps still the most obvious were his eyes. His azure eyes had apparently been renovated in the accident with healing chakra. Naruto's first clue came the day after in his pupils contracting to slits in the harsh light of his bathroom. From there less obvious changes abounded.

The tips of his ears slowly crept up into points and in retrospect he was just thankful that they didn't move to the top of his head and grow fur like he kept expecting them to. His fingernails and toenails restructured themselves turning black and becoming extremely hard and much like claws. His canine teeth, always noticeably longer than the norm, grew even further and sharpened still more. His eyeteeth weren't the only dental modification though; his premolars had gotten sharper and had moved slightly to interlock like a zipper much like a dog or a fox's would. Moving back from his mouth, his whisker marks had darkened and deepened looking more like bad scars than birthmarks.

Finally and while he had no way to prove it, he was sure that his skeleton had changed too. His range of motion in his shoulders seemed to be greater than normally possible and he could swear that his shoulder blades had drifted slightly. He was walking more on the balls of his feet and maintaining balance with his toes instead of his ankles. But most important and consequently what he was happiest about was his bone composition. Whatever Sakura had done to her bones must have seemed like a good idea to the Kyuubi because it had copied the process.

Naruto found out his bones were much harder than they had been before when a drunken civilian had surprised him by jumping out of an alley and taking a swing at Naruto's head with a piece metal pipe. Naruto blocked with his forearm, too startled to even attempt to reinforce his bone or skin with chakra to make it harder. But his bone didn't break from a blow that even a week earlier would have put him in agony for a week while it healed properly, grinding around until settling in the proper place.

Overall Naruto had attributed his changes to a mix of ijutsu and the Kyuubi.

He knew that the tailed beast had to have at least a minor say in how his body was run. He knew that he healed much faster than all the normal kids and his five senses were far beyond what most people could ever expect to have even by forcing chakra to them. Naruto had actually avoided Kiba on occasion due to his heightened sense of smell and the deep seated instincts that would push him into a fight with the young man who reeked of dog. So it wasn't much of a stretch to believe that a charka surge initiating at the seal that held the demon was capable of modifying his body to be more fox-like.

Naruto shook these thoughts out of his head. Further dwelling on the changes wasn't going to change them back. Truth be told he actually liked most of the changes. The part of the changes he didn't like was that they would certainly call more attention to him in a way that wasn't desirable.

Naruto grabbed a snack to tide him over until lunch and ran back out of his door to meet his team for a mission and training. With lots of luck it might actually be a mission worth doing.

-- break –

When Naruto got to the bridge he noticed that Sakura looked much better than she used to. She had finally understood that she needed lots more food to keep her newly improved muscles working. With the cessation of her ridiculous dieting, she had regained the slight layer of softness that she needed to totally conceal her muscles from prying eyes.

She hadn't yet gone all out, preferring to go through all the motions so she would redevelop muscle memory of the academy style she knew, but Naruto was eagerly awaiting the session that she unleashed her strength.

He had seen her try out her newfound power a day after she had learned how to hold back. He had watched as she folded a kunai in half without any chakra augmentation to her muscles and made a vow to get good enough to warrant her going all out when she knocked over a tree, wider than she was tall, with a chakra boosted side kick.

Both Sakura and Sasuke looked over at Naruto as he walked onto the bridge and sat down to wait for Kakashi-sensei. Naruto had finally thrown in the towel with showing up on time and had stopped coming at the appointed time so he had no idea if his teammates were still showing up when the lazy-ass told them to.

Not five minutes after Naruto had sat down Kakashi showed up.

"Yo." It was a testament to the human ability to form absolutely useless habits that Sakura responded.

"YOU'RE LATE!" Kakashi just shrugged and turned on his heel to lead them to the mission office to get another pointless chore that any idiot could do but somebody had the perverse pleasure in assigning to the multitude of genin teams.

-- break --

"Well hello Team 7." This was the typical greeting given by the Sandaime to the trio of genin as they trooped into the mission office. While the Hokage was certainly not necessary to assign missions, Sarutobi had fallen into the habit of doing his paperwork off to the side of the hall so he could keep track of who was going where and doing what.

This greeting was usually followed by a respectful nod from Kakashi, a bow from Sakura, a grunt and turn of the head from Sasuke, and some disrespectful outburst from Naruto usually punctuated by him calling the elderly leader of the village 'ojiisan'. Today however, was different. The first three reactions were the exact same as usual but Naruto just settled for a nod in the Sandaime's direction.

This alerted his team that there was possibly a problem with Naruto. Thankfully he laid their fears to rest with his next statement.

"Ne, ojiisan, can we have a better mission today? I'm tired of doing all these shitty chores! Why can't we do something harder? We're ready for more."

"Well Naruto-kun, that is up to your jonin-sensei. If he thinks that you're ready for a C-class mission then I think we can assign your team with an easy one."

The gears in Kakashi's head were grinding. On the one hand he needed to accept this mission to provide some much needed experience and perspective for Sasuke. On the other hand neither Naruto nor Sakura were ready in his estimation for something beyond the simple chores and easy training exercises that he gave them. In the end he decided that Sasuke's development was more important than training the other team members to a comfortable point.

"I believe my team is ready Hokage-sama. As the jonin instructor of Team 7 I formally request a C-rank mission for my team."

-- break --

Sakura was packing her things into the smallish canvas backpack that the chunin who was teaching her medical techniques had recommended she get for missions. She paused for a short bit to think about all the new things that she'd just learned in the short time since being assigned this mission.

She wasn't sure whether or not she should be glad that Iruka-sensei was so concerned about her or if she should be insulted that he didn't think that her team could handle a C-rank mission. He'd protested giving them the escort mission she was currently packing for most violently. Especially violently really when you recalled his normally placid and calm demeanor.

On the other hand she was incredibly nervous about the upcoming mission. They were supposed to escort a drunken bridge-builder back to his home country and guard him while there until he was finished with he latest project. Being a C-class mission they were almost guaranteed to run into at least some minor resistance in the form of minimally trained bandits or thugs. She was confident in her Sasuke-kun's skills, she was even confident in Naruto's skills. What she wasn't necessarily confident in were her own skills. She hadn't expected acclimating to her new strength would take this long.

When she started planning how to improve herself to get Sasuke to notice her she had hoped that there would be something easy that she would do and overnight her precious person would notice and ask her on a date. Unfortunately as she started researching options for this improvement she was forced to start being more realistic, knowing that she couldn't just magic or jutsu herself into incredible skill. When she'd settled on improving what came naturally to her she'd decided that her chakra control dictated that she be a medic-nin. Again she was stemmed with the fact that most medic-nin's faded into obscurity, they just weren't set up to be noticeable they worked in the background except for one noticeable exception. Copying Tsunade was a very daunting task though.

When she decided that she would emulate the legendary kunoichi's strength she had thought that it would just be that. She would get enormous physical strength and after maybe a week of training to use it she would be amazing and Sasuke would notice. Now she was two weeks into her sudden increase in strength and she could barely eat without destroying anything, never mind actually using it to do damage or impress someone.

Well she was impressive but only in the sense that crushing rocks barehanded was impressive, i.e. intimidating but not all that useful unless you actually got your hands on whomever you wanted to hurt.

Either way she was going on this mission, she was determined that Sasuke-kun would not see her as useless, so she shook her head and went back to packing. She finished momentarily and decided that since she had enough time she would walk slowly to the meeting place and contemplate what exactly she could give to Naruto to discharge her debt.

A couple days after her self-operation Naruto had told her that he didn't want the technique that she'd used, it almost certainly would be useless to him he'd said and so he wanted something that he could make use of. Now Sakura was wondering exactly what he could possibly use that she had.

All of her medical knowledge was useless in this situation, he didn't have the control and while anatomy might help, he could learn that anywhere and it really wouldn't be enough use on its own. She sparred with him on a regular basis so more practice wouldn't be worth anything special because she needed it as much or more than he did. Perhaps something to do with seals or jutsu that she couldn't use or that he needed help constructing?

She shook herself out of her thoughts when she realized that she was already in front of the east gates.

She objectively knew it was possible but that didn't stop her jaw from dropping when she realized that she was the last person to arrive, all of her teammates were there _including_ her sensei.

"B-b-b-but, Kakashi-sensei, you're always late!" In response Kakashi gave an eye-smile that both Sakura and Naruto recognized as a very polite and subtle middle finger salute. This, of course, didn't faze either of the two genin as they saw it or a similar pleasant cum derogatory expression at least once a day during their regular team practice taijutsu spar.

Tazuna, the bridge-builder, was still silently angry about the quality of his escort. Even though the Hokage had assured him that these three prepubescent children and their lazy teacher could protect him, Tazuna wasn't convinced and was more than a little worried about the coming trip.

With realistic worries from Tazuna, a surprisingly professional mood from Kakashi, a typical arrogantly dismissive thought towards the difficulty of the mission from Sasuke, an eagerness to see someplace else from Naruto, and an unrealistic belief that the apocalypse was coming soon from Sakura; the group set off on the trail to Wave.

-- break --

Sakura was now sure that if she hadn't taken the time to look for Naruto that day and dig a little deeper into his life she would have been miserable on this trip. Kakashi seemed to have taken a leaf out of Sasuke's book and was blatantly ignoring everyone, the difference between teacher and student being that teacher was reading smut and giggling and student usually just scowled. Sasuke was ignoring everyone and though Sakura would immediately answer anyone who asked that he was thinking about something very cool and important, privately she was beginning to wonder. Anything that took this long to ponder was taking away all ability to communicate with the people who were supposed to watch your back and it could easily become an unhealthy obsession. She'd read enough about serious shinobi that fell into obsessions to protect their increasingly fragile psyche damaged by numerous dangerous missions to know the symptoms.

Naruto however was bouncing around like a four-year-old who took his morning coffee black, strong enough to stand a spoon in, and with three teaspoons of crack instead of sugar. His bells were making a raucous symphony of noise and his wooden geta were clack-clacking around kicking up dust as he bounced and skipped from one side of the trail to the other and up and down their traveling formation. Sakura was really beginning to wonder how he had so much energy to literally skip and bounce with a full standard-issue shinobi backpack on his back.

Perhaps before their recently changed opinions of each other this would have driven her into a rage, but now she saw some method to his madness… and promptly told herself that she was hanging around him far too often.

She understood that by acting childish he would cause any opposition to underestimate him. The attackers would think him little threat to themselves assuming Naruto simple or immature and unready for battle. Sakura knew that everything about Naruto was geared to making him unpredictable and seeing him deliberately or unconsciously creating situations where he would be a contradiction was almost humbling in how deft he was at deception. No one could be further from the truth when they assumed that Naruto wasn't ready to fight. Even though he'd hid it well from everyone else she had noticed his increased aggression during their spars. She thought it was safe to assume, even though most times doing such would guarantee Naruto would surprise her, that he was holding back a lot of newfound aggression if it was showing when he fought her. The aggression had steadily increased since the unexpected mishap during her ijutsu, but because she didn't have any evidence she didn't pry him for answers in the event he didn't know anything about it either or it worried him. She really didn't see the harm anyway, it wasn't like he was dangerous to her and the heightened hostility might prove a boon in a serious fight.

She had just decided to go talk to the blonde when she noticed him tense up slightly while passing a puddle in the trail. His subtle body language clued her in that something wasn't right. When two ninja burst from the puddle seconds after the group passed it, she mentally patted herself on the back for learning to read his body language.

This self congratulation was interrupted when the two ninjas charged. They wore long black cloaks that seemed torn to ribbons and barely holding together. Sakura's eyes however focused on their faces, made almost demonic looking by the respirators and goggles that dominated their faces. Her attention quickly wandered to their hands, the one on the right had a blade festooned gauntlet on his right hand and vice versa for the ninja on the left. Between the two gauntlets was strung a razor sharp chain which connected the nins and advertised their ability to fight in tandem with each other. As they sprinted forward the bladed chain between them wrapped around Kakashi and shredded him. Sakura froze, utterly still at the sight.

--

Sasuke however, did no such thing. A split-second pause where he contemplated how this would affect his training was all that happened before he threw a kunai to pin their chain to a tree as they circled to get to Tazuna. A brief hesitation and both ninja hit a quick-release on the chain leaving it stuck to the tree favoring mobility and speed over the usefulness of the chain should they take the time to pull it off the tree.

Sasuke jumped forward and started making handseals as fast as he could. A short string of five handseals with a deep breath and generous chakra spawned a man-sized fireball that shot towards one of the assailants. The nin, now identified by his hitai-ite as a missing Kiri-nin, spun out of the way of the incoming fireball and continued his charge altered to take him into battle with this annoying genin before continuing to his target.

Sasuke grabbed another kunai from his thigh holster and rushed the charging nin. Before he was able to make contact and prove that his Uchiha arrogance was justified, not that he looked at it that way, the missing-nin was caught around the throat by Kakashi and rendered unconscious with a punch to the temple.

Kakashi dropped the nin and with a quick order of "Watch him" he disappeared in a blur heading towards Naruto's fight.

--

Naruto was ecstatic.

Not because Kakashi had just gotten himself snuffed, he doubted that the jonin could have fallen for such an easily spotted trap, but because he was finally going to get to fight someone he was allowed to injure. He often fought, he sparred with Sakura and occasionally with Sasuke almost daily, he supposed that the occasional beatings he received from Kakashi followed by some minor instruction could be called sparring, and when he was lucky he could con another genin or young chunin into a friendly spar, but he wasn't allowed to severely injure his opponents whilst sparring which meant that most of the kung-fu he was learning was useless because it caused significant damage to the target of Naruto's wrath.

Now though he was allowed, and even encouraged, to cause devastating bodily harm to his opponent and he was going to enjoy this short span where he could indulge his increasingly insistent baser instincts. With such thoughts and expectations running through his head he dropped the concentration necessary to suppress his bloodlust in a fight and charged towards the arcing enemy nin.

Naruto adopted a wide grin that should have been a clue for the former Kiri-nin that the blonde was not all he appeared. However with visions of an easy victory and money from a paid bounty running through his head the gauntleted and masked shinobi charged recklessly in. At least until he was forcibly stopped by Naruto's knee in his gut. Naruto had used the split-second distraction to force chakra into his legs and take a greatly enhanced leap forward bringing his knee up into the missing-nin's stomach. The momentary surprise at actually being hit allowed for Naruto to bring down a vicious elbow to the top of the man's head and leap back to set up for something more.

Naruto quickly found that he was slipping too deep into his more vicious instincts and was in danger of loosing the henge that hid his more questionable attributes and with great reluctance reeled himself back into control. He only hoped that by making this fight more vicious and violent that the new instincts would be appeased.

He slid into a wide stance that would best complement the new style he'd been learning and waited for the ninja's next move. Judging by the bladed gauntlet his opponent would be relying heavily on taijutsu which meant that Naruto didn't have to look out for any ninjutsu being slung his way. Actually Naruto thought that there couldn't possibly be a way for the enemy ninja to form handseals with one hand inside that metal monstrosity and he filed away the possibility of one-handed handseals to look into later.

As predicted the black cloaked ninja charged again leading with his left shoulder and drawing his blade toting right back for a strike. Naruto was pretty sure that it wasn't smart to depend on a single strike like the ninja appeared to and he began looking for the catch or trick. The ninja's tattered cloak fluttered wildly as he sprang directly at Naruto. Without even shifting his feet Naruto swept his left arm across himself batting aside the bladed gauntlet and sunk his right fist into the ninja's torso directly under the sternum. This caused the nin's breath to leave him in one massive huff and before he could finish collapsing onto Naruto a black, steel-backed glove came out of nowhere to close-fist backhand the nin.

The resulting blow from the man Naruto absently noted to be Kakashi shattered the Kiri-nin's mask and sent him into the land of blissful blank blackness known as unconsciousness.

_Son of a bitch! He just stole my fight! Sure it wouldn't have lasted much longer but I wanted to make him bleed damn it._ Naruto was now feeling very irritated. His sensei who had left all the dangerous parts to Naruto had snatched his victory from him by landing the last blow. Now instead of his newfound aggressiveness being appeased for the time being, it was now calling even more fervently for blood, his worthless sensei's blood to be precise. _I hate how even though he's supposed to be my teacher and is supposed to know me and trust me he can't even let me finish my own fights. If he would have paid even two seconds attention to the fight he would have known that I could have handled it. Damn IT! Fuck you Kakashi!_

"These missing-nin were after Tazuna-san. I'm going to go and interrogate them to find out what they know and when I come back I expect you to tell me why the Demon Brothers are after you, Tazuna-san." Kakashi spoke calmly as he addressed the bridge-builder but the steel in his voice was clear to everyone. He strolled over to the other unconscious ninja and picked him up before walking a little ways off the trail and out of sight of the genin.

Naruto noticed a slight burning sensation on his left arm as soon as he calmed slightly and he traced it to the three shallow scratches on his forearm. He was mildly surprised that the claws had penetrated his wrappings until he remembered that he hadn't put the wire on as he'd expected another D-rank mission. He should have taken a little more time and put the wire on when he went back to get his pack and supplies instead of just putting his spools of wire in the pack.

What surprised him further was that the cut weren't healing, normally these shallow wounds he would be able to watch close. And the burning sensation was getting stronger, perhaps there was poison? _Well, nothing for it I guess. I'm gonna have to ask Sakura to take a look._

"Ne Sakura-chan, could you take a look at these scratches? I think there may have been poison on those claws."

This statement quickly snapped Sakura out of the slightly depressed funk that she had slid into after her shock was over and she had realized that she hadn't been any help to her teammates. Shaking off her disappointment at being useless in the face of possibly being useful now, she immediately gathered her healing chakra and formed several handseals for a simple diagnostic ijutsu.

Naruto obediently held out his left arm for her inspection and shivered slightly at the invasive feeling of her ijutsu. Sakura frowned at what she found in his arm. There was plenty of poison floating around in there but it all seemed to be isolated and gathered up under the centermost scratch as if Naruto's body was trying to reject the poison back out the same way it came in but couldn't quite complete the action. Seeing as there was probably never going to be a poison extraction procedure as easy as this one was shaping up to be, Sakura felt that she could pull this off even though she'd never done or even practiced this type of thing before. She knew both the theory and how to perform the best ijutsu to use so she went ahead and formed a different and slightly longer set of handseals before placing her hands back over the wound.

Sakura manipulated her chakra into a malleable shell around the poison that was already gathered under the wound, she knew that in anyone else she would have to use a more potent diagnostic to find every bit of poison and go fishing for it all but this was Naruto and apparently he was different. Very carefully she lifted the small sack of poison out of the wound and transferred it carefully to the ground, wishing that she'd had the foresight to ask for a small container of water to make sure it the poison wouldn't splash and would be diluted properly. Finished with that part of the task she activated her diagnostic jutsu again and scanned the length of his arm before noticing that he was concentrating chakra to his fingertips constantly, like a henge, or rather his special version of the henge.

Sakura raised an eyebrow at Naruto when she came in contact with his hand and his expression told her to either drop it entirely or to bring it up much later in private. She allowed her concentration to slip and the chakra she'd still had gathered in her hands to fade back into her. Now she had a totally different set of problems to worry about. Even beyond paying him back for his assistance in her bodily modifications what was she going to offer in return for the knowledge of what he was hiding beneath his henge?

Tazuna watched amazed at the interactions of the team he'd just seen in action. The brooding silent one had moved to protect without so much as a full second's contemplation at having his sensei reduced to bloody tatters. The blonde one seemed to light up in unholy glee at the though of a fight and even seemed angry with his sensei for stepping in to finish off the ninja the genin had been fighting. The pink-haired kunoichi had seemed shocked and frozen but after the fight had calmly healed the blonde after he had almost dispassionately noted that the claws of the missing-nin were poisoned. When he looked to where he had seen the jonin shredded he saw the cut up remains of a log sitting in the road.

And now they would be expecting answers that if given would likely signify the end of the contract he had with them dooming him to death and his village to poverty and oppression. He sighed and began to think hard of a way to spin this so that they would be honor-bound to continue. He thought that with the reputation of Leaf shinobi that maybe sympathy would work.

"So Tazuna-san, are you ready to tell us what two C-class missing-nin are doing hunting you? Perhaps you haven't told us the full truth about this mission." Kakashi said as he came back from the direction he'd left in. "I left them tied to a tree with ninja wire and sent a message back to Konoha for them to send a hunter-nin to pick them up."

Naruto scoffed at this. _Probably a message for someone to come and get the heads but anyone who honestly believes that those two are still alive is an idiot._ Tazuna nodded as if this made sense and the Uchiha nodded with a grunt to signify agreement but Naruto was pleased to note a skeptical look on Sakura's face as she looked at Kakashi. She even looked like she would question him about it but a glare told her that now was not the time for questions.

"Well" Tazuna began, "my country is very poor, even the Daimyo of Wave doesn't have enough money to pay for a properly ranked mission. The people of Wave have lost everything to a vicious and supercilious bastard named Gatou. He came in about two years ago and started buying out all the shipping companies. About a year and a half ago he finally managed to buy out the last one and from then on he's been squeezing the people of Wave for every last Ryō. When some of the people in the town defied him he had them publicly executed. The bridge I'm building will save the people from poverty and Gatou's tyranny because we won't have to ship things through him anymore. If you continue I promise we'll pay the full price for the mission as soon as we have the money,"

At this point the old man was nearly on his knees groveling. Naruto was feeling a mix of things. He was disgusted at how Tazuna was acting; he desired to protect the weak people of Wave; he was eager for the challenge stronger opponents presented; and to top it off he was hungry.

"I vote we continue. I want to help Wave and I'll be damned if the first real mission I'm given ends in failure, by default or not."

Sasuke and Sakura showed their agreement with an affirmative grunt and a vigorously nodding head respectively. Sasuke couldn't stand the thought that Naruto might be better than him and was going to use this mission to prove that as an Uchiha he was much better than the dobe would ever be. Sakura mostly wanted another chance to prove to Sasuke that she was stronger now and she needed the mission to continue to be provided the opportunity.

Kakashi shrugged nonchalantly and turned to address Tazuna.

"We will expect payment for an A-rank mission once we complete this. There is sure to be a stronger ninja up ahead if what the Demon Brothers said was true."

Team 7 and Tazuna gathered any dropped belongings and turned to continue down the trail towards Wave.


	6. Chapter 5

Team 7 was now looking at what amounted to an oversized canoe with an outboard motor and staring incredulously at the bridge-builder.

"You're saying that we have to ride in _that_ across open water?" This was Sakura, stating or restating the obvious in a way that left no doubt as to her feelings regarding whatever statement she was making at the time. Privately Naruto was beginning to wonder if maybe this whole mission was some elaborate conspiracy to get him killed. He threw that aside though as it would look bad for the Uchiha's teammate to die while he was around and Naruto felt marginally safe in assuming that the council wouldn't accept tarnishing the reputation of the last loyal Uchiha.

Today marked the morning of their third day on the mission. At the pace they were forced to slow down to the trip had turned from a short two day span to what was beginning to look like a four day span. Naruto just hoped that the canoe was much faster than it looked; he was impatient to be somewhere he could train again.

In addition to it taking so long, the trip was tense because of the lack of new attacks or view of opponents at all. When they had heard that Gatou was trying to kill Tazuna and seemed prepared to hire chunin-level missing-nins the genin and jonin had expected another attack soon, either by a higher ranking nin or by more chunin backed by genin or non-ninja mercenaries. So far though there hadn't been any sign of new opposition.

Naruto focused back on Tazuna and Kakashi when they motioned for the genin to get in the boat.

"We have to be very quiet while out on the water. Sound carries very well and we do not want to be caught by Gatou's blockade." Tazuna whispered to the collective shinobi. Once he'd gotten nods of affirmation in return he climbed into the boat and motioned for all of them to do the same.

When the man who had brought the boat pulled out oars Naruto resisted the urge to groan. _This is going to take forever. If we have to row all the way across something that needs ferries we'll be lucky if we make shore by tonight._ As if responding to Naruto's prayer the fisherman started rowing at a fairly brisk pace.

"The crossing isn't as long as it seems. Wave is unlucky enough to be far enough from the mainland to need a very advanced bridge to span it but not so far away to need full seagoing ships," whispered Tazuna. "We subsist mostly as a cheap port on the way to the more isolated towns and villages that make up the land of Water. With Gatou stationed in Wave he has a near monopoly on the shipping industry to those countries the only other viable route is through Flower country and that is still out of the way for caravans."

For all the talk of being quiet Tazuna continued to babble on in a very quiet whisper unable to stop due to his nervousness. Naruto actually began paying attention once Tazuna started in on the political and economical reasons for why the situation was the way it was. Indeed if the major Kages were to pay attention to anything outside of their own lands that didn't directly pertain to themselves they could have consolidated a lot of political power by helping wave and securing it as an outpost of their own land. The only question was how to deal with Gatou without bringing forth the ire of all the countries in which he did business. It occurred to Naruto that being as much of a bastard as he was reputed to be that someone should have offed Gatou long ago. So it stood to reason that the slimy businessman either had friends in high places, with undoubtedly higher priced tastes, or he had entrenched himself so far into enough people's businesses that everyone thought him necessary.

That was foolish of course, nobody was _absolutely_ necessary. In his experience every bastard that died was replaced by another one so it should follow that once someone crossed the line their ass was grass. The only question in Naruto's mind was how to minimize Gatou as a necessity in the eyes of the people who relied on him to provide a certain service.

These thoughts entertained the blonde all the way through the crossing as he contemplated how he could throw his own personal brand of monkey wrench into Gatou's machine and get away with it.

Naruto abandoned his activist-like thoughts as the boat slid silently into an intense fog. He noted that Tazuna had stopped whispering and Kakashi seemed more alert. This was another one of those times that Naruto wished he were more in tune with his chakra and could sense the faint signature that foreign chakra gave off from spent jutsu or hiding enemy nin. As it was he was pretty sure that this fog was unnatural. Regardless that would mean that they were either close to shore or a much larger boat had found them. While it was possible for ninja to walk on water, it would be the height of idiocy to station ninja on top of water as sentries. The phenomenal drain on their chakra would make them useless in a fight so the most logical place to put them would be just on shore where they held all the cards. They wouldn't have to worry about mobility and they would have the necessary elements to fight a nearly totally one-sided battle.

A minute or so later their boat ran aground on a short beach that led up to a road. Further down the way Naruto could just make out a huge structure that shot out over the water and was held aloft by huge pillars that went straight down into the water. He would have expressed his appreciation to Tazuna over such an impressive engineering feat but he figured that his opinion wasn't wanted right now and that any loud noises after so long in quiet might give the old man a heart attack.

With a wave to the fisherman who'd taken them across the group of five set off down the road towards the town Tazuna lived in which was also the town at the end of the bridge. This cheered Naruto immensely as it meant that they would be at their destination tonight or even this afternoon and he could resume his training and experimenting.

-- break –

The group had been walking for about ten minutes before Naruto's head snapped left and he launched a kunai into the bushes. Sakura tensed up and readied herself for a fight as soon as she saw Naruto bring out a weapon. She just as quickly relaxed seeing a white rabbit race away from the bush bleeding slightly from a gash in its ear.

"Damn Naruto! Don't scare us like that." Her outburst was met with an unusually serious glare from the blonde and she knew that the rabbit wasn't what had caused his throw.

"Rabbits shouldn't be white this time of year, that was a kawarimi," muttered Kakashi almost to himself. He seemed to stiffen slightly and then threw out his hand in a sweeping gesture. "GET DOWN!"

Sasuke obeyed without a second's hesitation, throwing himself to the dirt path.

Sakura dove on top of Tazuna bringing them both crashing down onto the gravel and sliding partially off the road.

Kakashi leapt to the side putting more distance between himself and his team anticipating a larger scale battle but remaining on his feet.

Naruto did the exact opposite. He leapt straight up probably two and a half or three meters vertical twisting and curling his body to reorient himself to a tree on the opposite side of the path he'd been facing before. Totally upside-down he crossed his arms, reaching into his equipment pouches, and flung his arms out sending out a hodgepodge spray of flying weaponry. The weaponry all converged at the tree that had just intercepted the 7 foot sword that had been thrown through the space his team had just previously occupied.

The man who appeared crouching on the handle of the enormous sword calmly snatched one of the thrown senbon out of the air and proceeded to use the long metal needle to deflect the rest of Naruto's barrage. Sakura gaped openmouthed at the sword and its wielder as Naruto twisted almost gracefully and landed in a deep crouch. The man, obviously a ninja, calmly dropped off of his sword before standing tall and snapping the senbon between his fingers. He reached behind him and with an almost negligent tug freed his enormous weapon from the tree it had found itself in.

--

Sakura looked carefully at the newcomer trying to get some insight into where they stood against him. He was tall probably a little taller than Kakashi-sensei which would put him firmly in the six and a half foot range. He was wiry and though he was incredibly strong, he would have to be to tote that sword around, he wasn't bulging in muscle which suggested countless hours of fine-tuning his swordsmanship as opposed to just using brute force. He was wearing a scratched hitai-ite of Kiri meaning he was a missing-nin, but he was wearing it sideways and slanted on his head. He covered his face in bandages formed into a mask similar to Kakashi's. He wore no shirt but as if to make up for it he had large leather straps crossing his chest in a 'y' shape with a metal buckle where they connected. If she hadn't been so scared of what he could do to her she might have laughed at the sight of a ninja in pinstripe trousers with legwarmers but it just didn't seem that funny when she had seen him snap metal in his fingers. His arms were covered in camouflaged arm warmers much like her friend Ino wore, but the blue and white splotching probably served more of a purpose than her friend's plain white ones.

The sword he carried was what worried her the most and consequently was what she couldn't seem to tear her eyes from. It was a monster. At least two meters long but probably closer to 240cm with the handle but what's another forty centimeters in the handle when you're swinging something that's got a two meter blade? The blade was probably thirty to forty-five centimeters wide and had a single straight edge with a semicircle in the edge near the base. The edge looked razor sharp as it continued up and smoothly swooped back at the tip before continuing across the top and continuing slightly past the spine of the sword to create a nasty prong on the end. There was also a circle cut into the fuller near the tip of the sword just slightly less in diameter than the width of the blade and was the only thing she could see that took any consideration of the apparent weight of the sword as it was probably cut for the sole purpose of lightening the blade.

All in all he made a very intimidating sight… and that was before he used any ki.

--

Kakashi was actually a little worried now. He immediately recognized the sword wielding shinobi as Momochi Zabuza the Demon of Hidden Mist. This mission was now possibly the most under-ranked mission he'd ever been on, sure he'd been on harder missions but this was setting a whole new standard of ridiculous. This had started as a low-range C-rank escort mission and was now at least high-range A-rank. Having one of the seven legendary swordsmen of the mist, all of whom were high A-ranked in the Konoha bingo book, immediately boosted this mission up to a corresponding rank with the highest ranked shinobi opponent.

If any more enemy shinobi crawled out of the woodwork they would have to send for reinforcements at least on the level of a chunin squad. He was confident in his ability to match the famous Kiri nuke-nin but if he were outnumbered they would be forced to retreat and hole up until reinforcements could arrive, providing that the Hokage thought this mission important enough to salvage and didn't just order them home.

"Momochi Zabuza, the Demon of the Hidden Mist, what are you doing here?" Kakashi needed to direct Zabuza's attention away from his team and Tazuna so that any fight they engaged in wouldn't spill over into the genin who he was sure weren't ready for the level of combat a powerful jonin could represent.

"Sharingan Kakashi, the Copy-Cat Ninja, well it seems that we have a problem. If you'll be so kind as to move out of the way I can just finish off the bridge-builder and be on my way. There is no need to get those brats killed."

--

Naruto honestly never thought that he would be grateful for Sasuke-teme's stoicism. He actually half expected a disbelieving 'nice shot dobe' or similar degrading comment, but since there was no comment from Sakura apparently the Uchiha didn't need to comment either. Indeed, Naruto was beginning to think he was starting to reap vast dividends from letting Sakura into his life even a little. Already the bet he'd made with her had galvanized her into training seriously even if it was for the wrong reasons (securing a date with the teme), but it had also introduced trust in his abilities as opposed to the past knee-jerk criticisms of every action.

The overall effect was that once he'd thrown the kunai nobody had bothered to mess up his hearing with loud exclamations condemning his 'obvious' failure as a shinobi. With his hearing unimpaired, he'd actually heard the incoming projectile long before Kakashi had said anything.

With his forewarning of incoming danger Naruto had decided on a different course of action. If he could get above the battlefield then he would have a decent return shot at whoever had the audacity to throw a sword at him. When Kakashi yelled for them to get down Naruto had dropped his backpack and jumped as high as he could to escape the projectile path and had prepared himself to launch a wide variety of his own projectiles at this new enemy.

It would have worked on any chunin and though the higher-level ones might not have taken a fatal hit it would have been a marked disadvantage to start the fight injured. When he saw the strange new ninja pluck one of the senbon out of the air and use it to deflect the rest of the weapons Naruto nearly salivated at the prospect of a good fight. Even as he landed in a crouch he could hear his own heart pounding in his ears and his blood was singing in anticipation of an opponent who could push him to his limits and beyond.

Naruto only dimly noted the ninja's name was Zabuza and that he had been hired to kill Tazuna. All Naruto cared about was the upcoming fight. He was barely holding onto his henge as it was and he knew that he would be forced to drop it and some of his limiters if he wanted to do more than annoy this swordsman.

Naruto was just about to deactivate the seal that was responsible for his resistance training when Kakashi decided to take charge and get serious.

--

"Naruto! This guy is way out of your league. Get back to Tazuna and guard him!" Kakashi said as he lifted his hitai-ite exposing his Sharingan eye. Naruto was about to charge in anyway but common sense put the brakes on that idea and the memory of Zabuza's skill at deflecting his original barrage was like a bucket of ice water that allowed him to wake up to reality.

Grumbling slightly Naruto backed up to take position to the right of Sakura placing him closer to Zabuza than she was while making sure that the missing-nin didn't have a clean shot at the bridge builder. Sasuke, following his teammates' example, took up the final point of the defensive triangle behind and slightly to the right of Naruto. Sakura and Sasuke quickly stripped themselves of their backpacks and threw them off to the side of the trail so they could move more freely. Zabuza seemed to take this as Kakashi's answer to his polite request that the Konoha nins move aside.

"I guess that were doing this the hard way," stated Zabuza as he flashed through several handseals. "I'm honored to see the Sharingan so soon. Perhaps you can provide me some entertainment; it's been such a long time since anyone gave me a challenge." Sasuke gasped as he caught a glimpse of Kakashi's red Sharingan eye. _Could he be an Uchiha? No, but then how does he have the Sharingan_ thought Sasuke. Soon the air seemed much more humid and a thick mist gathered over the battlefield. As the mist thickened enough that the genin couldn't see more than a meter around them Zabuza spoke out in a voice that seemed to come from all around them, "Eight fatal points, the heart, lungs, liver, jugular, spine, femoral artery, larynx, and kidney which point am I going to strike?"

Even as he stated which points he might use to kill the Konoha ninjas his ki rose until it was nearly suffocating.

--

Sasuke could hardly breathe. _I'm going to die! He's going to kill me and I'll never have killed Itachi. I'm going to die here. Oh Kami, make it stop please make it __**stop**__! _Sasuke reached for a kunai, he was going to stab himself just to make the feeling of helplessness stop.

--

Sakura was trembling. Zabuza's ki settled heavily on her and she was scared. She could easily admit that the murderous intent in the air frightened her. But… there was the time that Naruto had released his seals; that had been even more overwhelming than this. _What did Naruto say about ki? Something like ki is just ambient chakra that a person releases which corresponds to the emotions that the ninja wishes to express. __**Yeah, that's right. He said that we had to flare our chakra so that we weren't overwhelmed by his. Maybe we should try that.**__ Ya, that's what we'll do, and then we can prove that we've gotten stronger. __**Yes, to BOTH of them!**_

Sakura started forcing her chakra to flow more rapidly and with more volume through her body, much like keying up for a fight. Her tenketsu began leaking more of her chakra into the air around her and immediately she felt the horrible pressure and rage lessen. Then she took stock of her teammates' reactions to the immense ki.

--

Naruto paused…

…he glanced at Sakura and watched as she mastered her fear and herself, going so far as to release an almost respectable amount of her own chakra into the air to lessen the effects of Zabuza's ki… he glanced at Sasuke and watched as he started to go for a kunai… he stared in disbelief, totally ignoring the two jonin about to fight, as Sasuke lifted the knife to his own throat.

Naruto repressed his own chakra as much as he could just to get the full effect of Zabuza's ki.

Then… Naruto _laughed._

"You call _**this**_ ki?! _*laughter*_ That is nothing. _This_ is _**KI!!**_" Naruto roared as he dropped all pretences of restraint on his own chakra and filled it with all of his suppressed anger, the villagers' cold hate, and his bestial side's primal rage.

Naruto continued to chuckle even as all movement stopped and Sasuke, Sakura, and Tazuna fell to their knees under Naruto's ki.

--

The two jonin ceased their fight even before they'd done more than begin to set up for it. Zabuza's ten Mizu Bunshin stopped their advances into their positions. Kakashi paused where he was underground having left a Kage Bunshin in his place. Kakashi began sweating where he was as he tried desperately to figure out if the Kyuubi was breaking out of the seal or if Naruto really had that much anger. Zabuza's eyes widened dramatically. _The little blonde brat can produce this much ki? I've got to end this quickly. Sorry Kakashi, but I can't play with you if you've brought a chunin-level psychopath as backup._

Zabuza directed on of his clones to get behind the bridge-builder and cut him down so he could leave mission accomplished. That wasn't quite how it worked out.

--

Naruto waited for the inevitable strike at Tazuna. He knew that by drawing so much attention to himself with his outrageous ki and his flaring chakra that Zabuza would assume Naruto to be better than he actually was. If Zabuza thought Naruto was an actual threat then he would immediately try to complete his main objective in the most straightforward way possible. What that meant to Naruto was that Zabuza would concentrate just enough force against Kakashi to allow him to make a strike against the old man in the quickest way possible.

It was a fairly sure bet that Zabuza knew a solid clone technique; every major hidden village had at least one available. So Naruto was betting that the real Zabuza would strike hard and relentlessly against Kakashi and send a clone in behind the genin. Naruto kept up his ki so that Tazuna would stay down allowing Naruto unrestricted movement to block whatever attack the clone used.

There. Naruto's eyes sharpened once he felt Zabuza's chakra flare in front of them signaling a mid-level attack jutsu. He had already used his first burst of unrestrained chakra to cancel his movement resistance seal and he used a little of the tree-climbing exercise to make sure he had good traction. He felt movement from behind, heard the wind shift as it displaced from something large, and he smelled a more concentrated source of water behind them.

Naruto flexed his knees and leapt backwards spinning around as he grabbed a kunai in his left hand and a set of shuriken in his right. He raised his left hand into a high guard position to block the overhead chop that the Zabuza clone was using. Even as his left arm raised his right shot out towards the torso of the clone and released the shuriken straight into its stomach. The clone exploded in a shower of water and Naruto reigned in his chakra totally ceasing his ki output.

He heard Sakura yell something and spun to see another Zabuza swinging down at Tazuna from the position Naruto had just left.

--

Sakura had already been working on struggling to her feet from the force of Naruto's ki and was standing back on her feet crouching bent over gasping for breath while she mustered her will to stand the rest of the way up. She looked up at Naruto and saw him suddenly tense and he seemed to blur as he moved backwards twisting to intercept Zabuza who had just appeared behind them. Her eyes widened as she saw him raise a kunai to block the massive sword even as he flung a handful of shuriken.

She spun her gaze forward even as Zabuza exploded into water. She too had deduced that he would attack them with a water clone first. Her relief at Naruto's masterful destruction of the water clone dissolved even faster than the destroyed clone itself when she saw yet another Zabuza appear in Naruto's previous position.

"Naruto!" she screamed desperately even as she moved forward with a kunai of her own. She realized that she was able to move freely now which meant that Naruto had stopped projecting ki, but even now she knew she wouldn't make it in time. Just as she was bringing up her kunai in a similar guard position as Naruto had used, a kunai seemed to appear through Zabuza's chest.

Sakura involuntarily jerked her head back as the spray from the wound hit her in the face and even went into her open mouth. She didn't even have time to register the taste of the fluid as water when a third Zabuza appeared behind Kakashi, who had been the one to stab the second water clone. As the clone exploded into more water, the Zabuza behind Kakashi swung his massive sword through the silver-haired jonin's waist.

Again Sakura didn't even have time to register how traumatizing it was to have your sensei killed in front of you when Kakashi exploded into smoke. Shocked Sakura's eyes widened to the extreme as another Kakashi burst from the ground behind Zabuza and was promptly kicked in the chest even as he managed to plant a kunai into Zabuza's thigh. Zabuza again exploded in a shower of water as Kakashi flew through the air to land in a pond off to the side of the road they'd been walking on.

--

Sasuke watched in awe as the exchange of clones went on between A-rank ninjas. The moves were executed so fast that he hadn't seen any handseals and he could barely keep up with their short taijutsu exchanges and movements around each other. He'd been equally surprised by Naruto's speed in dispatching the clone that had tried to get behind them. He'd been downright astonished when he'd seen Sakura able to move at all when he himself had been held down like being chained at the bottom of the ocean. All of this was just footnotes however to the total devastation the ki that all the combatants were flinging around was causing to his mind. Even Sakura was outputting a surprisingly strong feeling of desperation and determination when she moved to put herself between the Zabuza clone and Tazuna.

Why couldn't he seem to move when even the dobe and the weakling were able to get to their feet and defend their client?

He struggled to his feet as he saw Kakashi kicked into the pond after destroying the third water clone. He looked at where Kakashi had flown to and saw him struggle to the surface even as he scanned for the real Zabuza.

--

Kakashi's head broke the surface as he gasped a breath. _He's much better than I expected, that kick really knocked the air out of me. I've got to end this quickly. Where is he? This water feels strangely heavy… SHIT move!_ Kakashi tried to move but the water around him gathered him up and rose into a super dense sphere of water trapping him. He looked up to see Zabuza to his left and slightly behind him as he rested a hand on the Suirou no jutsu feeding it chakra to retain its form.

Kakashi then noticed the seven other clones of Zabuza that began closing in on the genin and Tazuna. Even at just a tenth of the creator's strength, seven Mizu Bunshin would be plenty to take care of the genin.

"Take Tazuna and run! The clones can't get too far away from their creator. Get somewhere safe and send a message to Konoha, the mission is more important!"

--

Sasuke was flabbergasted when he saw Zabuza appear behind Kakashi already flashing through handseals while Kakashi concentrated on something between them and the genin. He watched the water surge up around Kakashi and condense into a sphere around him trapping him as Zabuza held the jutsu stable.

"Take Tazuna and run! The clones can't get too far away from their creator. Get somewhere safe and send a message to Konoha, the mission is more important!" yelled Kakashi. Sasuke prepared to follow orders even as the seven remaining water clones stepped out onto the road and faced the genin.

He turned to his teammates and saw the determined look on Sakura's face and heard a low growl from Naruto.

--

Naruto was severely pissed off.

He already knew that Kakashi was a shitty sensei but he had assumed that he was a top-notch shinobi, after all the council wouldn't let just anyone teach the last Uchiha. This display that he'd just watched had been pathetic. Granted Kakashi had been able to move much faster than Naruto in an effort to stop the second water clone from killing Tazuna but that was expected of any jonin. So far Kakashi had been caught after killing two water clones which as far as the blonde was concerned was something that he could have done.

The Sharingan was supposed to be an ultra powerful doujutsu that even had some predictive abilities so there should have been no way that Kakashi couldn't have dodged that last kick that had put him in the water. Letting himself get caught on the water while fighting a Kiri-nin? Even Konohamaru, the Sandaime's bratty grandson, was smarter than that.

Still, Kakashi was a part of Team 7, which unfortunately meant that they had to try to rescue him. _We better get something really good for this. Three genin against an A-rank missing-nin is suicide._ With these thoughts running through his head, Naruto allowed his aggression to rise and he started growling softly as he ignored his sensei's orders.

"Sasuke-teme, you're going to need to grow a pair and try to distract those seven clones. I've got a plan I'm gonna need Sakura for," Naruto growled out. He turned slightly to Sakura. "I'm going to transform a couple Kage Bunshin into kunai and you're going to throw them at Zabuza to see if we can get him to release the water jutsu he's holding. Got it?" When Sakura nodded he formed a series of handseals and in a poof of smoke he handed two kunai to Sakura before charging towards the clones Sasuke was attacking.

This was the first time Naruto had released the movement resistance seal since he put it on and his newfound speed felt amazing to him. It was like the rest of the world stood still and waited for him to move. He noticed Sasuke blasting multiple bowling ball-sized fireballs from his mouth at a group of three clones. _Fire against water? Dumbass. Four clones for me then. Excellent._ He raced towards the first of his opponents.

_Forward, fast. Grab kunai._

_Duck, step forward. Inside his guard, slash! Miss._

_Jump back. Overhead block._

_Forward and right. Twist and…_

_Stab! _

_Next clone_

_Jump over blade. Block backswing. Lost left kunai. Twist, get feet to tree._

_Grab shuriken. Kick off tree. There._

_Throw shuriken… hit!_

_Next clone_

_Incoming! Back handspring! Block. Back up! Back up!_

_Now! Forward! Slide under legs, throw kunai upwards. Grab two more kunai._

_Next clone_

_Dodge left!_

--

Sakura nodded to Naruto's plan. There wasn't much they could do without Kakashi to equal Zabuza, if they could free him then they would only need to deal with the clones. She caught the two kunai that Naruto had tossed her. She didn't quite know why he didn't ask Sasuke to throw the kunai as he was a much better marksman. _**Remember that he doesn't want to tell people that he has a true transformation technique. With our new strength if someone asks about it he can say that he used a normal henge just to confuse Zabuza.**__ Right, I forgot. That actually makes lots of sense._ She drew her arms back and hurled the knives to pass right by Zabuza's head, not to hit but close enough to be thought of as a decent attempt to make him move.

She watched as the kunai flew past Zabuza's head without drawing so much as a flinch, at least until they transformed back into two clones of Naruto not long after passing him. She saw the clones wind up and hurl a brace of shuriken at Zabuza's back concentrating on his right arm. She smiled a little when Zabuza was forced to release the water prison to dodge left and away from Kakashi. Now that Kakashi was free to deal with the real thing she thought it might be good for her to help get rid of the water clones.

She knew that she couldn't leave her position in front of Tazuna. She dug into her kunai pouch for a couple shuriken which she proceeded to hurl with all her considerable strength at two of the clones that her Sasuke-kun was engaging. She smiled when the four shuriken appeared to disintegrate the heads of two clones. The other clone Sasuke was fighting was soon dispatched by a clever throwing trick that allowed Sasuke to curve the flight of several of the throwing stars around like mini boomerangs.

She turned to see how Naruto was doing with his clones and nearly had to pick up her jaw off the road. She watched as Naruto slid feet first on his back between the legs of one clone even as its sword impacted the road where he'd been standing. She was amazed as he launched the single kunai he had in his right had straight up into the clone's crotch causing it to burst into water. He curled into a ball and came to his feet even as he was reaching for two more kunai. He twisted left sharply almost as soon as his hands drew the knives from his thigh pouches and not a moment too soon as another Zabuza clone swung its sword up through the space Naruto had just occupied.

Sakura had never seen anything with such deadly precision. It was easily as good as watching the short exchange between Kakashi-sensei and Zabuza earlier. No movement was wasted by either fighter and yet it also seemed that neither fighter was comfortable fighting the way they were. She knew that Naruto preferred to take a solid stance and let all attacks glance off him as he blocked or shifted minimally to reduce damage. That was how he sparred with her and that was how he seemed to like it. But now he couldn't block the clones' swords, not with kunai at any rate, so he was forced to change his fighting style mid-fight. He was still moving minimally and using short devastating attacks but he was forced to avoid blocking in favor of cleanly dodging the huge cleaver. The water clones on the other hand didn't seem used to such close quarters fighting. Naruto was keeping too close to his opponent for the clones to effectively use their swords and it was showing in their awkward swings and counters. Every time the clone would back up to give itself more space to swing Naruto would follow or strike at a newly created opening.

Sakura was transfixed and found herself supremely disappointed when Naruto ducked the last clone's horizontal slash while sweeping its legs out from under it. As soon as the clone hit the ground on its back Naruto twisted violently bringing his left hand with his kunai gripped in a stabbing position down hard into the clone's chest. Naruto rose to his feet breathing heavily and looked to both his teammates to check on them before turning his intense gaze to his jonin-sensei and his opponent.

Now it was time for Sakura to be horrified. As soon as Naruto's eyes swept over her she could swear that she could feel them on her skin heating it and burning her like the midsummer noon sun. She noticed her breath was shallow and fast. But far worse, and yet better too, was the way her nipples tightened almost painfully under her shirt when he looked into her eyes with blazing azure slit-pupiled eyes. All the heat from battle seemed to gather itself into her and rush to the junction between her thighs and she shuddered delightfully as the intense heat exploded into delicious pleasure. She blushed furiously as his eyes drifted away apparently convinced of her wellbeing.

Sakura wanted to somehow sink into the earth and never come back. _**Holy shit girl! You just had an orgasm when Naruto looked at you. Kami, your **_**soaking**_** wet! Thank god you aren't wearing black panties or you might have some seriously difficult to explain stains when you go to wash them next time.**_ Sakura bit her lower lip, closed her eyes, and prayed to Kami-sama that he would shut inner-Sakura up. Thankfully she was shaken from the comments of her traitorous inner personality by twin roars.

--

Naruto planted his left-hand kunai in his last opponent's chest and stood to check on his other teammates. He looked at Sasuke first as he wasn't sure if the arrogant prick could handle three clones on his own. _Well you see miracles every day I guess,_ he thought as he noticed Sasuke staring back at him with a look of superiority and barely suppressed jealousy towards Naruto's taijutsu skills.

His gaze swept over Sakura next. She seemed fine if a little flushed. He scanned her for obvious injuries and satisfied that there were none brought his eyes back to her eyes. She seemed to shudder strangely before biting her lip and Naruto had to turn away quickly lest she see the smirk on his face.

He knew exactly what had happened with that shudder. In fact he supposed that he should have expected it from her. A heavy adrenalin rush coupled with a near-death experience and intense physical strain would produce a potent cocktail of various endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin; he'd read a lot about it when he'd hit puberty and couldn't seem to end a good fight without a raging hard-on. The same thing had just happened to her but as this was so much more extreme than anything she'd already experienced she wasn't prepared for it and it had turned into a full orgasm with just a minor catalyst. He couldn't wait to explore this further when they started sparring again.

He refocused on the fight that Kakashi-baka and Zabuza were having. They were both standing on the water making handseals wildly. They both finished at the same time and the water underneath both of them exploded upwards as both shinobi in a nearly mirror image of each other jumped back to avoid the simultaneous attacks. As they landed they began making handseals again, this time Kakashi finished first. Naruto thought that they could have done without all the talking during the sealing though. This time the water to the left of Kakashi boiled up and a serpent like dragon made entirely of water burst from the lake before circling around Kakashi and charging at the still furiously sealing Zabuza. Finally Zabuza finished his string of handseals and his own dragon rose from the lake in front of his feet. Both dragons let out a screeching roar as they clashed.

--

Zabuza's only partially formed dragon didn't stand a chance against the greater momentum of Kakashi's dragon and was destroyed. Kakashi's dragon plowed into Zabuza lifting him up off the water he was standing on and charged a further six or nine meters before slamming into a very robust tree on the other shore. As the dragon dissipated it revealed a beaten and bruised exiled-nin.

Before anyone could react two senbon needles shot out from the tree line and struck Zabuza in the neck. A new shinobi revealed herself from the woods on Zabuza's side. She was dressed in a light blue battle kimono and had an ANBU mask secured over her face.

"I must thank you for wearing him out for me. We've been on the trail of the Demon of the Hidden Mist for some time. I'll take care of the body elsewhere, I wouldn't be much of a hunter-nin if I let the secrets of the mist get out now would I?" The hunter-nin's voice was very soft and Kakashi nodded as the ninja knelt and lifted Zabuza's body. A second later the Kiri hunter-nin vanished.

Naruto and Sakura frowned at the irregular procedure but with the scent of Sakura's arousal still heavy in the air Naruto couldn't get a reliably recognizable scent to put to the hunter-nin. Kakashi turned around and walked back to where the genin were sliding his hitai-ite back down to cover his Sharingan eye.

"Well Tazuna-san I think that the sooner we get to your house the better off we'll be," said Kakashi with his patented eye-smile. The effect was somewhat ruined when his eye rolled up under his eyelid and he passed out. The three genin were totally nonplussed at this anticlimactic ending to the fight.

"Well fuck, what's wrong with him?" asked Naruto already turning to Sakura. She looked over Kakashi for a couple seconds before nodding.

"It's just chakra exhaustion. He'll be fine once he's had a couple days rest. We should get to Tazuna-san's house as quickly as possible." Now there was a new problem that had all the genin looking at each other. Finally Naruto shrugged and held out a fist.

"1, 2, 3, shoot," said Naruto towards Sakura. Naruto had rock but lost to Sakura's paper. "Damn. 1, 2, 3, shoot," was now directed at Sasuke. Naruto won this one with his rock against Sasuke's scissors. "He's all yours Sasuke-teme," he said with a smile as he walked away to retrieve both his own and Sasuke's backpacks.

Sasuke grunted as he hefted Kakashi across his back. Naruto picked up Kakashi's pack as well and motioned for Tazuna to point the way.

-- break --

When Team 7 finally arrived at Tazuna's home they were very much ready for a break and a meal. They had high hopes for both when the front door slammed open and an early-thirties aged woman raced out towards Tazuna.

"Tousan! You made it! Are you okay? Are these the ninja you hired? What…" The questions seemed to have no end as the black-haired woman finally gave vent to what must have been a solid week of worries.

"Yes Tsunami, I'm fine thanks to these wonderful shinobi. You should have seen the way they dealt with the other ninja we ran into. I was worried about the blonde one and the girl but they did an amazing job. Come, let's move this inside. Their instructor was injured during the last fight."

"Oh no Tazuna-san, Kakashi-sensei isn't injured. He's just got a mild case of chakra exhaustion. I suppose you might think of it as working too hard and then passing out. It's a normal thing that only in severe cases ever harms a ninja," supplied Sakura.

"Will he need anything? Come in and lay him down in the bedroom upstairs and down the hall."

"No, he just needs rest. Tsunami-san was it?"

"Yes, please come in I'll have dinner done in another hour or so."

"Arigato, Tsunami-san."


	7. Chapter 6

The day after his fight with Zabuza, Kakashi woke up around noon and idly wondered where his genin were. Team 7 had been waiting for Kakashi to wake up before continuing the mission objective of guarding Tazuna while he worked on the bridge. In the meantime they had all decided that their time was their own and they were treating Kakashi's downtime as they would his tardiness.

--

Sasuke was reading more about fire element manipulation from one of the scrolls he'd brought along for the trip. He still wasn't having much luck getting it right and his pride was taking a fairly severe beating, something he took care to hide from his teammates. He seemed to think that an Uchiha could just read scrolls on jonin-level skills and somehow automatically apply them without instruction or countless hours of practice. To be fair though his current fire jutsu were steadily gaining potency and he'd even been able to change the direction of his Katon: Goukakyuu no jutsu while in-flight by adding another handseal to the end of the normal series. For the morning that Kakashi had been asleep Sasuke had been attempting to alter the properties of a minor fire jutsu. He thought that this way he could practice his fire manipulation while conserving chakra.

The problem with this idea was that the minor fire jutsu were almost entirely controlled by the handseals and thus the actual amount of chakra manipulation that went in to one was negligible; this was the reason that element manipulation was a jonin-level skill. To get enough practice to be proficient at elemental manipulation meant slinging around B-class and higher elemental ninjutsu regularly and the lower rank ninjas just didn't have the chakra capacity for it.

--

Sakura was out behind the house standing on the lake back there and hurling kunai and shuriken at several targets onshore. She was attempting to get the muscle memory of throwing weapons back. Currently she had to consciously think too much about where and how to throw her kunai, shuriken, and senbon. Unlike her teammates she couldn't practice her jutsu without someone to practice on and she was hesitant to go to town to offer her meager services to the local clinic.

She'd started the morning off by going through her taijutsu katas on top of the lake but she broke that off a couple hours ago when she realized that her admittedly still small chakra reserves weren't up to the task of keeping her afloat if she kept bouncing around like an epileptic rabbit. One thing that she'd realized quickly though was that she was capable of using her chakra from anywhere on her body to stay afloat, not just her feet. This pleasant discovery had led her to practice some of her most intense katas but her overall chakra capacity had curtailed that.

She did smile slightly remembering her assistance to Sasuke as she moved on to shuriken practice and even though he hadn't said anything about it she was sure that he would acknowledge her strength soon and a date would be sure follow on the heels of that.

--

Naruto decided that he was tired of having to dodge.

It wasn't that he wasn't good at it, it was merely that he didn't like to. His morning and quite a bit of the previous night had been spent in contemplation of how he could get his tetsusukin to work. He'd tried a partial transformation like he was using to cover his new 'accessories', but that had been unwieldy and too difficult to adjust on the fly so that had ended when he couldn't move freely. So he was back to square one.

This morning he'd tried the chakra shell again because that had been what had worked the best so far. He found the exact same problem as before, it took too much chakra and it was all he could do to keep it up while walking let alone fight with it up. He knew that the Iwa shinobi used a stone skin similar to what he wanted to accomplish but that required the shinobi to change the chakra to be earth natured so the infused skin would take on many of the properties of rock. Naruto didn't know any earth jutsu and as such couldn't develop an affinity towards earth without them, which meant that he was shit out of luck on that front.

About an hour ago it occurred to Naruto that maybe the answer wasn't to saturate the skin or create a shell but rather gather the chakra up under the outermost layer of skin and steadily increase the pressure until nothing could penetrate that layer of chakra. It made sense in theory, any chakra used inside the body that hadn't been burned up by increasing muscle strength or otherwise would return to the coils after it was done being used with only a minor amount lost. This minor loss, provided it wasn't being used to block something, meant that he wouldn't have to worry about the constant, severe drain associated with the chakra shell. At the same time he wasn't attempting to augment his skin so he didn't need to change the nature of the skin at all which, hopefully, would mean that his overall physical performance wouldn't be hindered.

Now he was working on gathering the chakra in a fashion that wouldn't injure himself. The downside of all of this was that while charging this technique he wasn't able to hold his transformation and his new teeth, eyes, ears, whiskers, and claws were on display for all and sundry. The good news was that with the change in chakra signature he could probably pass off the changes as a bloodline technique similar to the Inuzuka's beast imitation jutsus but he hoped that he would be able to reform his henge after he had finished gathering the chakra.

--

When Tsunami heard Kakashi getting out of bed she hurried upstairs to help him in any way she could.

"Erm, I don't suppose you know where my team is at; do you?" asked Kakashi as soon as he saw her come around the doorframe.

"Well the dark-haired one, I think his name is Sasuke? He's downstairs on the front porch reading a scroll and breathing flame every once in a while. Sakura-san is out on the lake behind the house, she's the one that told us what the problem was and that you just needed rest. I don't know where the blonde is. I think he said his name was Naruto, but he left really early this morning and headed out into the woods; since neither of his teammates said anything I assumed it was okay."

"Yes that's fine. I was worried that they might have decided to continue along with the mission and take Tazuna out to the bridge today without me to help. They are just genin after all and while they are more than a match for common thugs and perhaps an even match for an equal number of genin that's not what we have been facing." Here Kakashi eye-smiled before continuing. "If you have something that I could use as crutches for a couple days I really need to see to my team's training."

Tsunami nodded and left the room for a moment before returning with two crutches.

"Arigato, and now to find my team."

Kakashi quickly dressed and went downstairs to grab something to eat and find his team. He found Sasuke right where Tsunami said he would be. The genin was repeatedly forming three handseals and blowing out a thin stream of fire that he would keep up for several seconds before stopping to curse. Kakashi looked at the scroll next to Sasuke and mentally reminded himself to explain element manipulation to him the next time they worked on jutsu together.

"Sasuke, we're going to have a team meeting. I need you to try to go find Naruto, if nothing else just yell and see if he answers. I'm going out back to get Sakura."

Kakashi expected to see Sakura sitting out on the dock reading whatever scroll or book she'd brought along to entertain herself. What he found was Sakura standing on the surface of the lake attempting to mark out the kanji for "accuracy" with senbon on several trees she was facing. This raised his eyebrows. He knew that Sakura had excellent chakra control but he hadn't known that she did anything with it. He knew that at some point Naruto had found a book describing practical chakra control exercises and taught himself and by extension Team 7 tree-climbing but he hadn't known that Sakura had gone further.

"Sakura, we're having a team meeting! Come inside unless you know where Naruto went and if so help Sasuke find him."

Sakura nodded at this and walked across the water to fetch her horde of thrown weapons before heading into the forest. Kakashi turned and walked slowly back into the house.

-- break --

Sakura knew that Naruto was looking for a clearing in the woods for him to practice his tetsusukin and she was very curious about how that was going for him. Once he finished it she would finally be able to stop holding back in their spars and really make some progress in her taijutsu. In the meantime she wanted to ask him if he knew a better way to generate muscle memory, the fact was that with so great a muscle mass she couldn't affect any changes in how it was set up unless doing something that was actually going to strain those muscles. The way it was now she felt like she could do katas for a week straight and not be anything but supremely hungry and mentally tired.

Actually she really hoped that he found and perfected a usable technique soon because she had no way of releasing her aggression anymore. Just a month ago if she got angry at someone who was annoying her she took a swing at them, but now if she tried that she could very well kill that person on accident. Even though this forced restraint was doing wonders for her anger management, she was beginning to get very stressed. The stress itself just kept building and building. She was stressed because at anytime a minor mistake could cause her to seriously injure someone and the responsibility and the self control and the constant pressure were getting to her and wearing her down. All that building stress led her to the conclusion that she needed a more durable friend and Naruto had elected himself with his idea for using chakra to toughen up.

She blundered into the clearing Naruto was in and stopped fast, shocked at what she saw. Naruto was different looking than he usually was. He was sitting in a lotus position with his geta off to the side and appeared to be meditating. While this was different enough from the norm it wasn't what had caught her attention.

His wrists were settled on his knees with the palms facing up which served to give his female teammate an excellent view of the two centimeter long black claws that tipped all of his fingers. That was surprising enough that Sakura decided to look much closer than usual at her teammate, after all if she'd somehow missed black claws what else hadn't she seen? Her eyes trailed up his form noting idly that his toes were similarly clawed and continued without interruption to his face where she noticed the next changes. His mask covered his face but she was sure that if claws had appeared then she would bet that the teeth had similarly become more bestial. His ears she found were pointed, much like the elves she used to read about after she'd finished her ninja academy homework. His belled hair did little to hide the points and she wondered if he could hear any better or it the change was purely cosmetic. His eyes were closed but she remembered, with a shudder, how they had looked after the fight yesterday when he'd looked at her and she wondered if his pupils were still slits.

She continued her advance into the clearing until she was standing in front of Naruto. In a rare display of tact, possibly brought on by her desire for him to finish his iron skin technique, she simply sat cross-legged in front of him and prepared to wait for him to resurface from his mediation. It wasn't very long before his eyes snapped open and Sakura had just enough time to confirm the shape of his pupils before she was grabbed by the shoulders and yanked spinning into Naruto's arms.

--

Naruto was aware of the entire clearing he was in. He had decided about an hour and a half ago that mediation was awesome. It looked boring sure, but anything that allowed him to know intimately what was going on around him for nine meters in every direction was something to be looked much deeper into.

After several minutes of just basking in his ability to hear the ants marching around in the anthill three meters ahead and to the left of him while smelling the three newborn bunnies in the rabbit burrow six meters behind him at the base of a tree, he got serious and began the process of channeling chakra in the way he thought would finally be the answer to his problem. He decided that stealth would never be his thing. There were too many things that were working against him. Some things he did on purpose, like his bells, and some things were just bad luck, like his enormous chakra capacity that he doubted he would ever be able to fully suppress for stealth. The newest addition to the list of reasons that he would never make a good stealth specialist was the technique he was working on.

Already he had a significant amount of chakra gathered under his skin and he could tell that just the chakra signature from that could easily be picked up by any experienced jonin-level sentry. In the end he decided that since it would be so unlikely that he would be a stealth specialist even without the technique, the only thing he could do would be to condense it enough to lessen the signature as opposed to finding a way to turn the technique on and off quickly.

He'd made quite a bit of progress and had noticed that the technique seemed to be self-sustaining when he heard footsteps and caught the scent of Sakura just outside the clearing. He knew that she would have caught sight of his changes so the only thing to decide was what to do about it. As he thought about what action, if any, he should take he tracked her steps around until she sat just in front of him. In his uncovered form his sense of smell was heightened even beyond his original advanced senses and Sakura's scent was starting to get him excited. There was something there that he didn't consciously recognize that was pushing his arousal up around her. It was odd because it didn't seem to follow her newly started monthly cycle so it couldn't be that he was recognizing what passed for human female heat. Nonetheless it exuded from her in waves and with this new jump in sensitivity Naruto was unprepared for it.

Almost against his will his concentration faltered and his eyes snapped open locking with her own jade orbs. Before he even realized he was moving he'd grabbed her by the shoulders tugged her forward and spun her around so she was now sitting with her back crushed against his chest, her legs slightly bent, and nestled between his own recently extended legs. He now had wrapped his left arm under hers and around her torso just under her breasts slanting downward to curve his hand around her waist just above her hip. His right hand had snuck under her right arm and crossed diagonally upwards between her breasts to rest his palm lightly on the left side of her jaw and stroke her cheek gently with his claws.

--

Naruto rubbed his face against Sakura's back to push his mask down over his chin without disengaging his seals and then moved it up to nuzzle her where her neck and left shoulder met. Sakura's startled shriek quickly turned to a moan as she felt Naruto pull her head to the side with his right arm to expose more of her neck. Her moan deepened and turned husky when Naruto's chakra broke its willed restraints and washed her in his arousal.

Sakura bit her lip to stop the moan that threatened to tear itself out from her throat as Naruto's teeth scraped her skin gently. She ground her ass back into Naruto's lap as she tried to tell him something without words that she herself wasn't sure of. She didn't know what she needed but she knew that Naruto had it if she could just get him to give it to her. Her own tightly reined in chakra escaped and began creating a small feedback loop that poured her own stimulated arousal back to Naruto.

Naruto grinned deviously against Sakura's neck as he began laying small kisses up her neck and up her jaw line to her ear. He breathed heavily across her ear and smiled wider when she let out a moan and pushed her ass more firmly back against him.

"Shhh, patience Sakura-chan. Calm yourself. You've seen something you shouldn't have. You've been a bad girl you know that Sakura-chan?"

"Mmm, no I haven't. I've been a good girl Naruto-kun," whimpered Sakura as she laid her head back on Naruto's shoulder.

"No, you've been a bad girl. You saw me with my claws and ears and eyes and teeth. What am I going to have to do to you to make sure you don't tell anyone? But you wouldn't tell anyone would you Sakura-chan?"

Sakura would have shaken her head vigorously if Naruto's right hand hadn't still been holding her still. Her pupils were dilated in lust as she tried to reassure Naruto that she would never be a bad girl to him.

"No, no, no, I won't tell anyone."

"Not even Kakashi-sensei? Not even your gossiping friends back in Konoha?"

"No, never," she claimed as she desperately made eye contact with Naruto's slit pupils.

"That's my good girl." Sakura literally purred at being called a good girl and snuggled back into Naruto's chest still drunk on the feeling of his chakra surrounding her. Naruto resumed stroking her cheek lightly with his claws and attempted to calm himself down from his arousal. It was a very pleasant surprise to find he could make a girl aroused and subservient with a different form of ki, but he was pretty sure that once out of his influence Sakura would cease to be subservient and he needed real confirmation that she wouldn't tell anyone how he looked without a henge on.

--

Sakura was starting to come back to herself. Her mind was intensely fogged and she couldn't think too long about anything, no concentration at all. She knew that she had made some kind of promise to Naruto that was very important and that she should make sure to keep it. When she concentrated on what exactly the promise was she was surprised at how vivid the wording and subtle meanings were. She had promised to not reveal what Naruto really looked like but the subtle undertones were that she would actively try to keep it from people by misleading them if they got too close to the truth. Internally she shrugged as it wasn't an unreasonable promise to make; Naruto certainly knew enough about her that she would rather he kept to himself.

The next thing that she began to take note of was that she was perhaps the most comfortable she'd ever been in her life. As her mind cleared further she related it to when she used to get scared at night and sleep with her parents because the feeling definitely evoked thoughts of security and relaxation. But there was more to it than just security and relaxation. There was something primal and rough about it too. She felt that she almost belonged to whatever was evoking these feelings, like she was being jealously guarded so that nothing else could have her. It was intimate too, almost surrounding her and she found herself eagerly awaiting the time when she would be able to return the favor as much as she could.

Her mind cleared even more and she began to notice the physical feelings associated with the emotional that she'd already identified. Her back was pressed firmly against something strong and warm, it was immovable, eternal, but it was also soft and comfortable. She was surrounded on both sides by thick… legs, she realized, and she was held in front by an arm that went so far as to slightly support her boobs too… that is, had her boobs needed support it would have. There was another arm that curved up her right side and was stroking her face slowly and in a manner that was both teasing and relaxing. Her head was leaned back against something firm that supported her neck and stopped soon after the base of her head. The entire enclosure was actually rumbling slightly as if the person holding her were purring.

She smiled, she wasn't even sure she cared who was holding her as long as they didn't stop and the feelings continued. Her mind was nearly out of the fog and she began to notice the chakra that settled around her mysterious seat and herself. It was a mixture of both chakras and they were intertwined in a way so complete that she was having trouble identifying the other person's unique feeling. She recognized that both chakras were exuding such a relaxing feeling that she nearly descended back into the fog that she'd come up from.

Finally, her mind reminded her that there was something important that she needed to be doing and she began reining her own chakra back in.

As soon as her own pink-tinted chakra had returned to her, her mind kicked back into full swing. She now knew who was holding her. She knew what was important. She knew how she'd gotten where she was. She stiffened up when she realized that she'd once again soaked her panties in an orgasm.

Once she'd stiffened she heard Naruto start chuckling.

"Sorry about that, I dunno what happened to me. You obviously came here for a reason, so what's up?"

Sakura noted distractedly that he continued to stroke her cheek and hold her intimately but she found that she wasn't angry with him and even enjoyed it. Plus the fact that she was facing away from him meant that he wouldn't be able to see how flustered she was.

"Yeah… Kakashi-sensei is awake and he wanted to have a team meeting. He didn't know where you went so he sent Sasuke and me to find you. How long have I been sitting here?"

"We've been sitting like this for about five minutes. Not long at all, though I suppose we should hurry up and find Sasuke so we can get back to Kakashi. This probably has something to do with our mission now that he's awake."

"Yeah," Sakura agreed as she almost reluctantly pulled herself out of Naruto's embrace. After she stood up she moved a little ways away and started to fix the damage her excitement had caused while she had her back turned to him.

"You know that with an advanced sense of smell nothing short of a full bath or shower and a clean change of clothes is going to hide that from me."

At this statement Sakura very closely resembled a tomato with pink hair. She immediately whipped around eyes blazing with fury and putting a fairly respectable amount of ki into the air as she swung back and planted her fist right into Naruto's chest. Sakura's anger immediately cooled. _Shit, I've killed Naruto-kun! No, no, no, no, no._ She looked at the damage and her thoughts ground to a halt with all the grace of a derailed freight train.

Naruto hadn't moved a centimeter.

She was amazed. Her knuckles hurt in ways they hadn't since she'd first begun using boulders as punching bags.

"S-sugoi," she gasped. She looked up into Naruto's eyes and was met with a wide fanged smile and eyes that practically screamed their amusement. "You finished it?"

"Yep, now you can finally go all out again. I dunno if I would trust it with a chakra powered punch, but as long as I keep channeling chakra to my feet to hold me down I can take your punches."

"You said that so I would get angry and hit you."

"Doesn't make what I said not true… but yes I did."

"Arigato"

"For the lewd comment?"

"No you baka. Arigato for letting me use my strength again. You have no idea how hard it is to keep on your toes every day, day after day, never letting yourself relax because you're afraid of hurting someone. So arigato," she said and jumped forward to hug him with all her massive strength.

"Ooph, now that is a hug. _*chuckle*_ Tomorrow if you feel up to it I'm gonna need you to chuck senbon and all manner of other pointy things at me to see if it works against anything but fists."

"Aww Naruto, you know I'd be happy to throw pointy things at you all day if you'd let me." Sakura smiled up at him batting her eyelashes coyly with laughter sparkling in her eyes to let him know she was teasing.

"Ha, ha, wow I feel the love," grumbled Naruto, the sarcasm practically dripping from his words. "Well we better go see what the pervert and the teme want."

"HEY! Don't call Sasuke-kun that!"

-- break --

They arrived back at the house picking up Sasuke along the way near the edge of the forest looking up every tree he came across as opposed to the more logical strolling through the forest yelling Naruto's name. Apparently Sasuke thought that his stoicism was more important than finding his teammate. Naruto honestly wondered why Sasuke didn't jump at the opportunity to run about declaring him a 'dobe'.

They were ushered into the dining room where their sensei was sitting at the table eating some lunch. The novelty of their sensei being able to eat with his mask still on had worn off long ago. His greeting of barely looking up at them seemed a little disingenuous. He had called them all from pursuits that would be useful to their ninja career if not the mission itself, the least he could do was acknowledge them.

"Good, you're all here. As I said we're having a team meeting about our mission. There are a couple things that I need to tell you that will effect how we spend our time here. The first is that Zabuza isn't dead. The hunter-nin was a fake; a real one would have cut off the head and burned the body immediately to preserve the secrets of the village. We would be better prepared to assume that since he kept Zabuza alive that he is an accomplice and will be joining him later once they've recovered for their next assault. The way that this affects you is that we will be doing the guarding in shifts for the next ten days or so to allow the two that aren't helping me guard Tazuna-san to train for the inevitable confrontation.

"I'll be teaching each of you a mid-level jutsu and some more chakra control exercises that I think will be beneficial. If you master the jutsu I teach you to my satisfaction I will start you on another. Because this is a mission you will not train to exhaustion as some of you have shown a bent towards." Here he leveled a steely gaze at both Naruto and Sasuke. "The idea here is to train until you have used only what you can gain back with a three hour nap and a meal.

"One of you will accompany me and Tazuna-san to the bridge daily and help with guard duties. The other two will stay here and train but one of you will have to remain near the house to insure the safety of Tazuna-san's family."

The three genin all nodded in assent before Sakura spoke up. "Kakashi-sensei, what is the schedule going to be and what are the jutsu we're going to learn?"

"The schedule is going to start with Sasuke learning a new jutsu, Naruto working on chakra control, and you, Sakura, guarding tomorrow. The next day we will switch off with Sasuke working chakra control, Naruto guarding, and Sakura with a new jutsu. The third day in the rotation you will finish up with the task you haven't done yet. The jutsu I'm going to decide upon once I've seen what you're capable of based on chakra control, chakra capacity and what type of jutsu you would be best suited to." After hearing this explanation Naruto nearly groaned aloud.

There was no way that Kakashi would hand him a decent jutsu that might fit his strengths when Sasuke was around and might be jealous. Naruto thought he knew his teammates and his own strengths fairly well. The way he figured it would go would be with Sakura learning a supporting or offensive genjutsu, Sasuke learning another powerful fire jutsu that was a heavily destructive technique, and he would be relegated to something pathetic due to his less than average chakra control ignoring the idea that with his enormous reserves he could use very high-level low-control attack or defense ninjutsu.

Naruto resigned himself to looking up the Hokage or one of the other genin-senseis when they got back to see if he could bum a jutsu off one of them. He thought Asuma might be the best bet because he remembered that Kurenai was a genjutsu specialist. Either that or try to get Iruka or that crazy snake lady, Anko, to teach him one. During this trip however he was probably going to be summoning Sensei to teach him more of the ape clan's kung-fu.

"I suggest you all get some lunch and use the rest of today for any personal training you might be in the middle of. If you need my help I'll be around the house," Kakashi said, interrupting Naruto's thoughts. Naruto and Sakura nodded and after they had grabbed some omusubi and fish they headed back outside to resume their training.

--

Kakashi wandered over to Sasuke where the genin was rereading the fire manipulation scroll again; after he was sure that Naruto and Sakura had left. Sasuke looked up at his presence after he had finished causing his latest attempt at the fire-starting jutsu to curve to the right slightly.

"The best way to learn elemental manipulation is to use much larger scale jutsu and attempt to give them form. The smaller jutsu that you're using are basically locked the way they are because of limited chakra and the way the handseals are done. To truly get the hang of manipulating an element you must try channeling and changing a lot of it at once, then you can go back and start changing the subtle things. The jutsu I'll teach you tomorrow is a larger fire jutsu that has more form than the ones you use and that will help. If you want to continue working on manipulation I suggest you work on your chakra control so you have better control over what happens to the jutsu.

"I've seen you do the tree-climbing exercise, so that is one thing you can do. Another is called water walking which Sakura was doing out back before our meeting. But to get better much more quickly you must do something intricate, this exercise is for jonin. What you need to do is balance kunai on your fingertips. The idea is to release a constant amount of chakra to protect your finger while at the same time moving your chakra up the tip of the knife and holding on like you do tree climbing. The trick is to make sure you hold them upright so you will need to use the chakra holding them there to steady them. Start with one kunai on one finger and you will have mastered it once you can move your hand and finger all the way around and in any direction without loosing the kunai. After you have accomplished that you should add another kunai to another finger. Make sure you do this with both hands or you will find molding chakra easier with one hand than the other and you will throw off all your jutsu."

Sasuke barely gave a grunt and took out a kunai to start practicing what Kakashi-sensei had just explained. Kakashi buried his nose in his ever present book. Neither ninja noticed an unusually focused rabbit hop away from the house and disappear in a puff of smoke once under the cover of some bushes.

-- break --

Sakura and Naruto had decided to take the advice about personal training to mean that they should work on Naruto's tetsusukin. As such they were headed off into the forest to the same clearing that Sakura had found Naruto in. They had been walking for about five minutes when Naruto suddenly stopped and closed his eyes. Sakura turned to him concerned that he might be in pain about something with the way his eyelids clenched together.

"Naruto, are you…"

"That rat bastard son of a BITCH! As soon as we left that _bastard_ went over to Sasuke and taught him a new chakra control exercise right after explaining a better way to train elemental manipulation." Sakura jerked back slightly at the explosive interruption she received to her concern. Naruto was fuming.

"Wait, how do you know what Kakashi-sensei did after we left?"

"Kage Bunshin. Everything they experience in their 'life' comes back to their creator. I wanted to know what jutsu Sasuke was going to learn tomorrow and I thought that maybe Kakashi would tell him after we left so the _precious_ Uchiha could have a head start to prove he is a genius. Anyway, I made a clone and henged it into a rabbit and had it listen to them talk. After we left Kakashi decided to explain how the teme could train his fire manipulation that he's been trying to learn from that scroll the entire time we've been genin. The prick didn't even ask for help but Kakashi just offers it up anyway. Element manipulation is a jonin level skill. I've tried to get my hands of something that will tell me how to do it for ages but of course Sasuke gets it without even asking. What a fucking hypocrite. Telling me that some of my skills are too high-level for me to handle and then handing another genin two jonin-level skills both useful in battle and one taught with the sole purpose of learning the other.

"The chakra control exercise is to balance the sharp tips of kunai on your fingertips and use chakra to keep them there without hurting yourself and moving them all around. I heard enough that maybe we can work on it but I dunno how much it'll help you because I won't be able to demonstrate it until I've had lots of practice.

"Either way that's really not what's pissing me off! He shouldn't be favoring students and especially not on a dangerous mission that none of us are really ready for skill-wise. We've gotten through on luck so far and because we're easy to underestimate but you can bet that Zabuza won't make that mistake twice. We _all_ need new tricks and moves and he's concentrating on teaching only one of us something that he has no hope of learning in the time Zabuza is injured." When Naruto finished he was breathing heavily and had dropped his partial henge.

Sakura wasn't sure what to say. She knew that the hard facts of what Naruto had said were true, like the levels of the skill being taught and such, but she was having a hard time believing that Kakashi-sensei would deliberately abandon them. She also wanted to jump in a yell in Sasuke-kun's defense about being able to learn the skill on time but again she knew that realistically even Sasuke couldn't learn something jonin had to practice hard at for months in just a week or so. Maybe Kakashi-sensei wasn't trying to teach Sasuke everything about fire manipulation, rather just enough to make him more effective.

"Naruto, what if Kakashi-sensei is just teaching Sasuke-kun the basics so that the fire jutsu he already knows will be more effective." Naruto had to admit that was a good point. It would explain why Kakashi chose now to help Sasuke. But at the same time it didn't explain why Kakashi had been so vague in the instruction. If he had wanted to make Sasuke's already existing jutsu better, why not just give him a normal chakra control exercise and some tips on how to make the flame hotter or more explosive? No, Naruto was still convinced that it was favoritism. It may have been pushed forward by circumstances but Kakashi had not done what would have made Sasuke immediately more dangerous, which was the only reasonable goal of a mere week's intense training.

"No Sakura-chan, if he was just trying to make the jutsu the teme already has more dangerous he would have given specific instructions on what to modify, like how to make them hotter or how to make the explosions bigger or how to make them go faster. He gave Sasuke general tips on how to increase his affinity which will help lots in the long run but almost not at all in the immediate future. The chakra control exercise would take him most of the week just to get the basics of if I understand it right and while that will mean him using less chakra during the fight it won't give him a trump card, it'll just be more of the same. Either way I'm pissed at them both so sparring right now would be a bad idea incase I get carried away. How about you hurl a bunch of senbon at me and we see if I can't surprise that fake hunter-nin when she can't take me down that way?"

Sakura nodded eagerly at this and they spread out to begin their practice. She was a little distracted by Naruto taking off his shirt and wrappings and she couldn't help but notice how attractive Naruto looked. Even though he was only 13, two years older than her and Sasuke she'd found out after sparring several weeks ago, he already had a drool-worthy body. She thought he was very well sculpted and her eyes lingered longer than they should have on his six-pack and pectorals. He wasn't huge by any means and at 167cm tall he wasn't stocky but rather seemed to be expecting a growth spurt to complete him. He was muscled in a manner the said speed and flexibility rather than the pure power she half expected to see rolling off bulging muscles. He seemed to hint at a much more muscle-bound physique with his attitude towards fighting and she actually wondered at his choice of fighting style, shrugging off and soaking up hits when he looked able to bend around them or race circles around an enemy. Her introspection on his fighting style was totally forgotten when she trailed her eyes across his shoulders and down his arms.

Thoughts popped into her head about him using those arms to grab her and crush her to that perfect chest. Her mind began running away with fantasies of how he would race forward almost too fast for her to see. He would grab her wrists and slam her up against one of the trees around her and pin her there with her arms above her head. She would helplessly struggle against him but it would only excite him. He would grab her by the collar of her dress before ripping it off exposing…

She shook her head violently to get those traitorous thoughts out of her head. _I like Sasuke-kun, not Naruto! I shouldn't be thinking about how I want him to ravage me… against a tree… with me helpless… and he could do anything he wanted to me with that gorgeous body holding me down, GAAAH! NO! Focus Sakura! You need to focus. _She looked opened her eyes, which she'd closed at some point during her fantasy and saw Naruto clearly amused about her distraction.

"I don't want to rip my shirt to shreds if I don't have to," was his only response. _I'm sure you don't_ Sakura thought. She was going to have to find a way to hide her excitement from him soon or she would probably die from embarrassment after killing him for one of his unwelcome comments.

Sakura removed several extra pouches she'd been carrying on a bandolier she'd pulled from her pack that morning. She set them out and began pulling out packets of senbon, shuriken, and kunai. She picked up the senbon and began arranging them in her thigh pouches for easier access. She looked up to Naruto to check if he was ready and received a nod. She started throwing them as hard as she thought a normal person might, aiming at the extremities because she didn't want to injure him too bad if it turned out this didn't work. Over the next hour they steadily moved up in danger from senbon to shuriken to kunai and also up in viciousness until one of her kunai shattered against Naruto's sternum after a chakra-assisted super-strength throw. It had knocked him back despite anchoring his feet to the ground and had caused a bruise about the size of a fist to form momentarily but that was a small price to pay for stopping cold something that would have passed right through a civilian without even slowing appreciably.

"Well, I think we can safely assume that thrown weapons except maybe those to the eyes are going to be ineffective against you. Now, what should we do with the remainder of the day? I don't suppose you know any really good training techniques or have been hiding some jutsu scrolls somewhere?" Naruto shook his head before answering her.

"No, nothing like that. I was thinking we might try that kunai balancing control trick because if you could learn that you might be able to deflect sharp stuff with your hands. _*laughter* _Just think of Zabuza's face if you were able to stop his sword cold with your bare hand." Sakura smiled at that image and while that particular situation wasn't likely nor even intelligent there was no reason for her not to learn a different method of chakra manipulation.

"Sure, let's do that."

-- break --

The next day was Sakura's day to guard so she, Kakashi, and Tazuna had headed out early after waking up the other genin team members and eating breakfast together. Kakashi wasn't able to use much chakra yet and ended up giving Sasuke a scroll he'd written up that night that explained how Katon: Kari Fenikkusu was supposed to work. He said that they would be back at lunch to see how the two boys were progressing.

Naruto decided that the most constructive thing for him to do would be to summon Sensei and see what could be learned from him. To nominally fulfill Kakashi's orders he would do it on top of the large lake, which they had discovered was actually an inlet from the ocean.

Naruto found that the kung-fu style of fighting that he was learning seemed to be based on individual reactions. There were certain things you could do in any given situation and Sensei taught Naruto those reactions. It was entirely up to the practitioner to decide what to use and when to use it. This explained why there were no set katas but the reason all the other shinobi styles used them soon became obvious. Katas were the automatic shortcut to experience. Once a shinobi or kunoichi knew several combinations of moves they didn't need the experience of several hundred battles and spars to know when to use what move. Katas were designed solely to set up your opponent and then strike them. The first several motions of the more complicated katas weren't even supposed to hit the opponent, they served the purpose of getting the opponent into a position to be hit without them being able to lessen the damage or block or dodge.

With Naruto's style there were only attacks and counters, the practitioner had to amass enough experience to use it and eventually to use it unthinkingly. To that end Naruto set to sparring with his clones. Since he got the experience of the clone when it was dispelled he would exponentially increase the rate at which he learned when to apply which attacks and counters. Because his resistance seal coupled with his incredible healing would vastly increase the speed at which he built muscle memory, Naruto was increasing in kung-fu proficiency at an extraordinary pace. Thus today wasn't such a surprise as it might have been to any other shinobi.

"Hm, you have progressed well these last five weeks of training. Now that you know how to take a hit and give a hit it's time for you to learn the next discipline. Your body type was never suited to tatsu no tetsusaru. Your build is much better for moving around hits and as you grow older it will likely only get easier. Your pride is the only thing tethering you to a style which is, at its very essence, a contest of pure strength and force of will. Make no mistake, you can and will be strong but you are much too wild to stand there and let someone hit you even if you do have a purpose behind letting them do so.

"We are moving on to another style that I suspect you will have little trouble learning but will not suit you. You will continue to learn all the styles in the order of least fit to greatest fit. You have already learned earth, now is water. We begin to learn boufuu no mai by relearning to move. This style is, like the name suggests, much like a dance and to dance you must be graceful. You are not graceful and as such I must teach you."

With this short introduction accompanied with as much praise as Naruto had come to expect from the cantankerous old ape, he began to learn to move like the water and flow gracefully when moving. It was probably for the best that Naruto was learning this on top of a large body of water because it got him in the correct state of mind. Naruto spent the rest of the day slowly becoming accustomed to moving smoothly without jerky movements and short bursts of speed followed by halts.

When it was nearly lunchtime Sensei detected several approaching presences and dispelled himself with strict orders to Naruto.

"Once you are alone again summon me so that we may begin to study the basis and mindset of this style. If you pick it up quickly I may introduce the basic counters in this style within the week."

-- break --

Sasuke devoured the scroll Kakashi-sensei had left him. He was ecstatic. Indeed he wished that he had learned earlier that dropping hints about what he wanted to learn would bring him information and training towards his goal much faster. Being beaten by that kunoichi so long ago was humiliating and still stung but it had opened up a whole new world for him in the end. In his rage at being beaten so easily he had originally decided to follow age-old Uchiha tactics and train with the person you wanted to beat until you knew all their secrets and could counter them after adding them to your own personal arsenal.

Then he had been stood up.

In response he had been pointed in the direction of a different instructor. He hadn't turned down the invitation to gain more power, that would be stupid, but it hadn't been his original plan. He had then in desperation momentarily taken leave of his better judgment and asked Kakashi how to counter wire tricks. The wealth of information he received on the subject stunned him. If that was the typical response to a simple question he could only imagine how far he could go if he continued to ask about techniques.

The problem was that his pride wouldn't allow him to repeatedly reveal ignorance. The Uchiha were supposed to be geniuses and above the need for help. The question now became how to ask without actually asking.

In just two meetings he had figured out a way. By leaving out whatever he was working on personally when they went to do team training, he would receive tips and offers of training regarding whatever had been on the scroll he left open. It was a simple leap to bring more scrolls to team meetings and he quickly found that the more general a scroll was the more information that Kakashi volunteered. Thus he began bringing scrolls that discussed the differences in basic to mid-level fire jutsu, these scrolls earned him more fire jutsu and that was the result he wanted.

Today he was moving on though. He wanted to know how to manipulate the fire element itself. In preparation for this he had brought a scroll on the basics of elemental manipulation that was explained in terms of fire. Just as he expected he was handed a higher ranked fire jutsu. Katon: Kari Fenikkusu was a B-ranked fire jutsu and Sasuke was nearly salivating to try it out.

Since Naruto had scampered off right after Kakashi had told them how the two genin at the house were supposed to act, Sasuke was stuck at the house. He decided that he could still remain at the house and practice his fire jutsu if he blasted it out over the water and he stood off to one side of the house to do just that.

After ten or fifteen failed tries Sasuke finally got it to work as it was crudely sketched on the scroll. Twenty handseals, a deep breath, and a chakra infused exhale through the two curled fingers of the tora seal produced a bird composed entirely of fierce red flames that took the appearance of a Papuan hornbill that winged its way out over the water some thirty meters before it fell apart and the fire went out in a rather innocuous fireball as it lost shape and potency. Sasuke found after some experimentation that he could direct the bird's path but doing so cut its range dramatically based on how much of a change in direction it was. He decided that the jutsu must have a set range the bird could fly based on the user's mastery of the jutsu and the place the bird, phoenix, fell apart was wherever it was when it had flown that far.

Sasuke spent the time till lunchtime trying to get the phoenix to go further, faster, and react better to his direction. He was disappointed that he became exhausted after five repetitions but he quickly disregarded Kakashi's orders and continued practicing past the limits his sensei had set. He was eagerly waiting for Kakashi to return because Naruto would be forced to return to the house and Sasuke in turn would be able to leave and actually use the jutsu on a target instead of directing it around until it fell apart.

-- break --

Sakura was starting to think that her super-strength was more of a pain in the ass than it was worth. The changes that accompanied her sudden physical change were enormous and annoying to deal with. She had found almost immediately after the operation was over that her chakra reserves were increasing far beyond what they had been before. She thought that the increase in muscle and physical power must have upped the ratio of physical energy in her chakra.

Consequently her control was dropping off and she had anxiously prayed that nothing bad would happen to her teammates the first couple weeks afterwards because she was unable to work her ijutsu at all.

Fortunately she now was in a position that there was nothing to do but she was expected to remain there and not be distracted. This was fortunate because it presented a perfect opportunity to subtly train her chakra control. Since she was supposed to be paying attention to her surroundings she couldn't do anything truly involved but that didn't stop her from manipulating her individual hairs like wires to begin a very arduous and inefficient way to braid her hair. By doing it one strand at a time most of her progress would go unnoticed but at the same time she had to control all the hairs she'd already done which made the process increasingly difficult as she progressed further.

She smiled at Kakashi and Tazuna as she walked around the bridge and amongst the workers keeping watch for hostile forces. She couldn't wait for lunchtime when she would have a solid thirty minutes to an hour to work some serious and involved chakra control. She thought she might try to do the kunai trick with senbon.

No sense in cutting up her fingertips should she mess up after all.

-- break --

Lunch was a quiet affair. Not much was said due to Sakura being occupied and Naruto boycotting conversation with the other males on the team. Thus with the two talkative people quiet the two taciturn people found out exactly how accustomed they were to the others' chatter and found themselves feeling intensely awkward.

After lunch Sasuke made a break for the door and was out and away from the house before Naruto had even stood up. Kakashi finished his lunch leisurely and meandered out back to see Sasuke's prowess.

Naruto sent another clone, this time in the form of a frog.

-- break --

"Well Sasuke, let's see what you've got." Kakashi stood back as he waited for his prize pupil to demonstrate the jutsu he'd been working on. Sasuke just grunted and nodded, which was about as talkative as he ever was, and formed the handseals before taking a deep breath and releasing a phoenix of fire with a one and a half meter wingspan. Kakashi watched it as it flew ten meters before slaloming through the trees before dissipating after about thirty-five meters.

"That's very good Sasuke. I want you to spend the rest of today perfecting your water walking and working on the chakra manipulation that I showed you. The better your chakra control is the more you will be able to vary the technique. Once you have truly mastered it you should be able to make the phoenix the same body size as yourself and be able to send a bird the size of the one you just did forty meters. This jutsu is a pursuit oriented fire jutsu and is best to use against someone who dodges frequently due to the jutsu's ability to change direction swiftly as well as being able to use the wings to corral and burn your opponent. Once mastered you should be able to get the bird to totally reverse directions within one of its own body lengths.

"Remember that this jutsu takes lots of chakra to perform properly so it should only be used when you can guarantee a hit with it. When we meet Zabuza and his assistant again I want you to stick with the fire jutsu you knew before, especially Katon: Housenka as it uses the least chakra per fireball. Use those jutsu to maneuver your opponent into a place they can't easily dodge from and then attack using Katon: Kari Fenikkusu as a finisher.

"Another trick you can use with any fire jutsu that most don't know about is to detonate them before completion. If you overload a fire jutsu you know that it explodes right?" here Kakashi paused for a nod from Sasuke. "Well, the same applies while using fire jutsu correctly. You can with a minimal chakra surge make the jutsu explode before it reaches its target. The advantage is to use it in a large group of ninja, you fire it at the person in the middle and force it to explode before contact forcing all his comrades to disperse or risk damage then you can take them out individually. When you're not facing a group but are facing a shinobi who consistently dodges or is especially fast you can detonate it as it passes or if you think they will dodge forward or up to close the distance between you."

Sasuke nodded at this explanation and decided to try making the bird explode before reaching a target. Kakashi turned and started back towards the house. Once he'd made it about halfway there he turned abruptly and threw a senbon into the rushes beside the dock. He shook his head at his own paranoia when he saw a frog hop out and splash into the lake before swimming furiously to get away from him. He continued in to collect Sakura and hear what Naruto had been doing all day.

-- break --

After Kakashi left, Sakura and Naruto wanted to know what the other had been doing. Sakura didn't take long to explain her control problem and how she had drastically increased her reserves after the operation.

"Well that was bound to happen, Sakura-chan. Chakra is the mixture of spiritual/mental force and your total capable physical force which is limited in amount by your stamina and controlled by your will. You had lots of spiritual force because you studied lots and thought that being smart was the way to Sasuke-teme's heart so that's what you concentrated on. Your will is connected to your spiritual force so your control was much more advanced. But more than that, you were so lacking in the physical that you didn't need much control to harness it anyway, your advanced control was mostly because you didn't have much chakra to begin with.

"Now that your new muscles have taken root and you no longer need to channel healing chakra into them to keep them around you've boosted your physical force permanently since your strength isn't the result of a jutsu or chakra anymore. You still don't have a lot of chakra because even though you're very strong you don't really have much endurance. Your control is shot because you've added a physical component to your chakra you aren't used to. You have to regain your old ratio of physical to spiritual or you need to increase your will.

"As I understand it, your will is just your concentration and your desire to make a jutsu go right. I've got both of those but my control sucks because my physical component force overpowers the spiritual component force that is the means to bend the physical part to our wills." Naruto shrugged sheepishly. "That's how I think it goes anyway."

"That actually makes a lot of sense. So because I had a normal will and, say, twice the spiritual force as I had physical force, my normal will affected my physical twice as much as it should have. But you have the opposite problem, nothing goes right for you because even though you have a strong will you have twice as much of the physical force as the spiritual force so your will affects your physical force half as much as it should." Sakura nodded as many of the unanswered questions she had about chakra were answered. "Where did you hear that explanation anyway?"

"I didn't. I just looked around and made up my own explanation that made sense to me since nobody would explain it to me."

Naruto would never get tired of the faces Sakura made when she was totally shocked. He doubted he could have gotten that look if he'd hauled out a fish and smacked her in the face with it.

"So assuming your explanation is right, and it seems to be, all I have to do to increase my control is to learn more?" asked Sakura.

"No, I don't think that works like that. What is easy to build is your ability to concentrate and your will. That's what control exercises are after all, sure they increase your spiritual force but mostly it's just concentration and practice. I think that your spiritual force is determined by your ability to solve problems so to increase your spiritual force you would have to do stuff like puzzles and mind benders and advanced math problems, anything that would force you to think about something in a different way. I think you said yourself that you only had an average will so if I were you I'd just try to get better at control exercises." Naruto shrugged after his explanation as if to show his uncertainty about how she should proceed.

"You said that you were having trouble building muscle memory and while I was out on the water today I thought that maybe if you did your katas under the water you would build it faster. I dunno if you found some different way to do it I just thought I'd tell you before I forgot my idea. You would have to figure out a way to breathe under there but I'm sure it could be done."

"Thank you Naruto. I haven't found a way to speed up my development but that should work nicely." Sakura smiled. "So, what have you been up to? I know you mastered the water walking exercise a month or more ago. What else could you be doing out on the water?"

"Have you ever heard of Yoga?" At Sakura's negative indication Naruto explained. "It's a way of stretching and exercising that some civilians use to stay in shape. What I'm doing is like that but I'm doing it to improve my flexibility and natural balance. It's actually surprisingly hard when you aren't letting yourself improve your balance with chakra like they taught us in the academy or without sticking your feet and hands to the ground. Anyway, I'm out there performing it on the water so I can start learning my second kung-fu style. And before you ask no I'm not telling you how I'm learning it nor am I telling you what it's called, just know that there are five styles."

Shortly after that revelation Kakashi came in the door to collect Sakura.

"Naruto, I assume you have found a way to practice chakra control?" Naruto nodded. "Good. Sakura we need to get back to the bridge with Tazuna. I think that in the future we will need to stay there during lunch. We are inconveniencing our client by taking so much time from him."

As Kakashi finally left Naruto felt his clone dispersed and the memories accompanying it rushed back to him. _That son-of-a-bitch, I bet that works on lots of jutsu but he probably wasn't going to tell either Sakura or me about it. Kami, I can't wait until the chunin exams come and I can make chunin and then never have to see Kakashi-baka again except on missions in the distant future as a jonin._ Naruto tossed one last glare at the place that Kakashi had left from before he got up to continue his Yoga exercises.

-- break --

The next day was much like the day before it. Sakura was handed a C-ranked genjutsu called Kokuangyou no jutsu that robbed your opponent of their sight. The only thing the person you used it on would see would be themselves, the rest of their surroundings turned a pitch black like being in a cave with all the lights out and having no idea what was around you. There were several different versions including one used by jonin that could be used on multiple opponents and the other four senses but those required changes in how you were supposed to mold the chakra or different handseals and either change would classify it under a different rank or as a different jutsu entirely. The version Sakura was given was of a low rank and required the user to hold the last seal and continue channeling chakra in order to keep the illusion active. This made the genjutsu a purely support type jutsu, however it gained the attribute of requiring more than a simple kai to undo.

When she mentioned its limitations to Naruto he commented on how they were being marginalized in favor of being support for the Uchiha. She, of course, denied it but Naruto told her to wait till they knew what his jutsu was until she jumped to their sensei's defense. Naruto was actually surprised at how little she argued that idea and wondered if he was breaking through her prodigious proscriptive belief in Sasuke's superiority and entitlement to anything that would make him better. With Naruto's suggestion on how to work on her taijutsu forms and after she had achieved proficiency in the jutsu Sakura wondered off before Sasuke could leave and skiv off his turn guarding Tazuna's family.

Sasuke, seeing Sakura leave ahead of him, sat down and took out several kunai to try the kunai balancing control exercise. Naruto hoped he would cut himself enough to preclude training the rest of the day and further into the week.

Naruto went with Kakashi and Tazuna out to the bridge and after ignoring Kakashi's direct order not to he created twenty-five clones and began helping to construct the bridge as best he knew how. His excuse was that with more copies of himself out working the actual workers would be less of a target for hired thugs and any new missing-nin Gatou might have hired.

Naruto then spent the rest of the day learning how to build a bridge while picking up the some of the finer points of logistics that he would have to know before he became Hokage. Tazuna was surprised and pleased that someone wanted to know what was happening around him and was more than happy to explain the whys and wherefores of any orders that Naruto was confused about.

-- break --

Naruto was now certain that Kakashi was marginalizing the two less catered to members of Team 7. When Sasuke finally activated his Sharingan he would be able to immediately steal the techniques that were being taught to Naruto and Sakura. Beyond the fact that Sasuke would steal with little effort what they were being taught lay the more disturbing thought that their sensei didn't think them capable of wielding powerful jutsu.

Kakashi had decided that Naruto should be taught Shunshin the teleportation jutsu. Naruto had no idea why he was taught a jutsu that could basically only run away. The idea was similar to a hyper-extended kawarimi that couldn't be used in combat. The chakra surge would alert anyone capable of sensing chakra exactly where you would end up. The buildup took too long as well. While Kakashi hadn't told Naruto any of these faults when he handed him the scroll they would be obvious as soon as he started practicing so Kakashi couldn't be subtly trying to get Naruto killed. Naruto could only think that it was a basically useless jutsu for combat that Sasuke would have no trouble copying later and wouldn't be a huge risk in the jealousy department as he would probably be told, or would already know, the disadvantages of the jutsu.

Regardless of the reason, Naruto decided that he would master it quickly and in his downtimes from Yoga where he waited to heal the minor muscle tears he would think of ways to improve it to be combat worthy.


	8. Chapter 7

The week passed quickly with no sign of Zabuza and after a quick demonstration which showed that all genin had learned their jutsu satisfactorily Kakashi was forced to hand out another trio of jutsu. _Stingy bastard, he's reputedly got over 1000 of them it's not like he's hurting for options_ thought Naruto. These jutsu turned out to be significantly better for Naruto and Sakura while Sasuke was stuck with another fire jutsu of similar rank as the last.

--

Sasuke was given a C-rank fire jutsu that closely bordered on B-rank power wise and was incredibly versatile as it could be conducted along wires along side of the direct application by breath. It was classified as a C-rank because of its mostly formless nature. Naruto again spied on what jutsu Sasuke received via frog henged clone and he wondered why all fire jutsu seemed to be generated by mouth. He thought that you were really reducing your overall effectiveness if all your jutsu came from the same place. You were practically painting a target on it or if not at least you were giving your opponent advanced warning because they only had to dodge from wherever your mouth was pointing. Sasuke's jutsu was Katon: Ryuuka.

--

Sakura was given another support genjutsu by the name of Tsunbo no jutsu. It was a minor sense deception that targeted the audible spectrum this time. Sakura took joy in the fact that it didn't need continuous chakra channeling on the part of the caster to maintain. With this jutsu she could force her opponent deaf and then add the darkness genjutsu she had mastered earlier in the week. She hoped that with the better understanding of genjutsu that learning Tsunbo no jutsu afforded her she could modify Kokuangyou no jutsu to be self-sustaining.

--

Naruto was given a C-rank wind jutsu Kaze: Daitoppa which would create a huge blast of wind from his mouth. Naruto was excited about having an elemental jutsu for himself but had his ego neatly pricked by Kakashi after hearing all the things that were implied but not _outright_ said during his explanation of the jutsu and how best to use it. The stated uses for the jutsu were to break up groups of shinobi by targeting one and separating them for easier takedowns, to push an enemy into an immobile object to hurt them, to propel previously thrown weapons at incredibly increased speeds, and to eventually add wind chakra blades to causing it to become a truly destructive attack ninjutsu.

What wasn't stated outright but subtly suggested anyway was that a weak Kaze: Daitoppa could exponentially increase the intensity of almost all fire jutsu, that one could propel a teammate forward to attack much faster than expected, and that a good teammate would use the jutsu at full strength to keep enemy shinobi off balance while his other teammates were coming up with a plan of attack.

Naruto could think of many more uses than the stated and hinted and decided that since it was an offensive jutsu he would use it as one, not as a support jutsu but one to actually do damage and Naruto resolved to never use the jutsu in combat until he could add the wind blades and use it as it was conceived to be used.

Naruto wasn't ever told that contrary to what Kakashi had said that the original jutsu didn't have wind blades in it. Kakashi was just being passive aggressive towards Naruto by giving him a jutsu he shouldn't be able to master and thus limiting the number of jutsu the silver-haired jonin would have to show him.

-- break --

Twelve days had passed since Team 7 had arrived at Tazuna's house. Kakashi, Sasuke, Sakura, and Tazuna were getting ready to leave for the bridge. As of two days ago Kakashi had been bringing two genin with him to guard the bridge claiming that Zabuza was probably getting close to fully healed again. Naruto was still asleep in the bedroom having worn himself into exhaustion trying to get a handle on his wind chakra manipulation. They told Tsunami to wake Naruto up at 10am if he hadn't already gotten up by then.

Naruto was, in point of fact, not actually asleep but rather thinking about how to train additional elemental affinities. He was firmly of the opinion that there was a way to duplicate the effects of every kekkei genkai if you were willing to work hard enough for it. He knew that the first Hokage had a bloodline that allowed him to create Mokuton techniques but Naruto had heard it described as just a hyper-affinity of both earth and water elements. It made sense to Naruto then that if one trained hard enough to develop their elemental affinities then they could combine the elements to make new ones, he thought that those with the bloodlines to do so just have an easier time with it. The problem remained of how to work on developing your affinities if the only way to do so was to mess around with high-level jutsu of that element.

Naruto decided after mastering his latest wind jutsu that since throwing excessive amounts of chakra at the problem had worked before then it would work again. To do this he saturated the element he wanted an affinity for with his chakra in order to better understand it and how his chakra could affect it. He started with wind but as he understood it more he moved on to water and earth and last night while trying to saturate all three he exhausted the chakra his seals restricted him to and he had to stop for the night while his blocked reserves percolated over into the portion he wasn't blocked access to. The exercise bore fruit however and Naruto was now able to manipulate the wind he generated in his Kaze: Daitoppa into blades which he hid inside the greater bulk of the unfocused air around them.

While he had no way of knowing if he could now manipulate water in the same way he decided that in lack of a water jutsu he would move on to direct manipulation of the elements without handseals. He was sure he was still a long way from actually accomplishing this so he knew he wouldn't see results as quickly as he would like. Without handseals there was nothing to help direct his will over the chakra and he would need much greater control before he would succeed. On the flipside, with no handseals to constrain him, his imagination was the only limiting factor on what he could theoretically accomplish.

Direct manipulation was limited in a combat sense because it took too much chakra to create something significant and the applications were too few with only the minor changes most ninja could create. The idea in elemental manipulation was to make the jutsu you did know more effective or to use the knowledge gained to create jutsu of your own. That's not to say that direct manipulation wouldn't serve a ninja well. A skilled shinobi could channel their element into a weapon if they had run out of their own or their primary weapon had been broken and they didn't have a replacement on hand. They could use minor adjustments to their surroundings to off balance another ninja or distract them. They could even use some elements to improve their taijutsu: earth could make a ninja more resilient to damage, wind could add blades and extend a ninja's reach, fire could coat a ninja's hands and feet to do additional damage, water type ninja's typically adopted taijutsu styles that required more flexibility to capitalize on their tendency to be more lithe and malleable than other ninjas. All in all Naruto was happy with the progress he'd made in just the five days after coming up with the idea.

He heard Kakashi and company leave and he decided to get up. He thought back to the conversation he'd had with the fake hunter-nin while in the forest last night.

_-flashback-_

_Naruto heard rustling in the bushes off to his left. Because he was meditating and could hear things no normal human could be expected to he decided to play dumb and allow the interloper to approach. Naruto shortly detected a feminine scent he had smelled before but he couldn't immediately place it._

_Once the person had gotten within range to see him they tensed up and Naruto smelled evidence of shock and fear. He knew that the person was not a civilian, a civilian wouldn't be able to see him at that distance. The shock indicated that the interloper wasn't expecting to find anyone. The fear indicated that Naruto had met this kunoichi and she had probably seen him fight seriously. This information narrowed it down quite a bit. The only kunoichi who had seen him fight seriously were Sakura and the fake hunter-nin. Sakura would never show fear of him so it must be the mist kunoichi._

_She eventually came into the clearing making a passable attempt at playing a civilian. She was still far too graceful as walked around collecting herbs that a civilian would have trouble seeing in the dim light. Naruto made a show of coming out of his meditation._

"_Oh! Hello, I didn't see you come over. You must have been very quiet. Are you collecting herbs? Can I help?" asked Naruto._

"_If you think you can I'll certainly welcome anything that will get this done quicker. Are you a ninja? I see your hitai-ite around your arm there." She had a very light voice that shocked Naruto. It didn't seem like it should be coming from a glorified killer._

"_Ya! I'm gonna be the best ninja ever! I'm gonna be Hokage!" exclaimed Naruto as he moved forward to gather the small white flowers she was picking._

_They picked the herbs in silence for awhile. Neither was too keen on conversation. One didn't want to reveal her identity as a ninja and the other didn't want to reveal that he already knew. Eventually they ended up sitting side by side with the basket of flowers in between them._

"_So, what are the herbs for?" asked Naruto._

"_They help with healing injuries. I'm something of a trainee medic." Naruto noticed the odd title choice. Only ninja and samurai referred to their doctors and nurses as medics. Small towns like the ones in Wave would probably refer to their resident medical professional as a healer. "I think one becomes truly strong when they are serving another don't you ninja-san?"_

"_I'm not sure actually. I suppose that some might. I might even count myself among them. But there are so many reasons that people try to become strong that it seems wrong to say that only one way is correct. Some people become strong for an ideal and they do everything in their power to make it a reality. Others become strong only for themselves and they usually commit atrocious acts but one could still classify some of them as strong certainly stronger than some others. Others devote themselves to another person and they are often a mixture of the previous two, either committing horrible crimes or great good in the name of the person they are fixated on. Of course there are many levels in between. I would say that I fight for the people who are precious to me." Naruto shot her a smile that she probably couldn't see through his mask but the meaning was unmistakable._

"_I suppose you are correct. What is your name ninja-san?"_

"_I'm Naruto. What's yours?"  
_

"_Haku" she replied and they descended back into silence, though this silence was much more comfortable than the earlier one._

_Naruto tilted his head up to look at the sky again for a long moment before he pushed himself to his feet. "It's time I was heading back Haku-san. Will you be here tomorrow?"_

"_No, I should think that my business here in wave will be over soon and I will move on." This was news of the most informative kind to Naruto who inferred that Zabuza was healed and would attack the next day. He wondered if the flowers he'd helped to gather were stimulants that would boost Zabuza's recovery or performance._

"_Well then I wish you much luck and happiness in your ventures." Naruto said as he walked back towards Tazuna's house._

_-end flashback-_

Naruto knew that today was the day Zabuza would attack but if he knew crime bosses like he thought he did there would be some thugs coming to collect 'insurance' for good behavior on Tazuna's part. He had faked sleep so that he would be the one to deal with Gatou's thugs before racing to the bridge. He had to ring his bells in deference to Kakashi for teaching him the tool that made his plan possible. Without Shunshin he would never make it in time to be of help while remaining rested enough to fight.

Naruto outfitted himself in full combat gear and went out to wait on the front porch. Tsunami and Inari seemed to catch the difference in attitude as he came down the stairs because after a polite offer of breakfast there was none of the usual conversation. Inari was still stuck in his disheartened state and seemed determined to spread the misery around. To accomplish this he railed at Naruto for a good ten minutes while the ninja was eating breakfast. Finally Naruto could take it no longer and with a healthy dash of ki he shut Inari up.

"Listen! You have been stuck full of self pity since we got here. I understand the need to grieve and I know you miss your stepfather, but if you think you're the only one who's ever had a hard life you have another thing coming! Every ninja you will ever see has almost certainly had a harder life than you have. But that's beside the point; you think that resisting is futile. Well your ojiisan is resisting, your kaasan is resisting, even your tousan resisted; if you want to dishonor all of them keep telling me I'm going to die! Every time you insult someone who's stood up to Gatou you spit on your tousan's grave. I'm going to be out on the front porch, if you come out there with more of your doom and gloom I'll cut you a new and permanent smile from ear to ear across your throat."

After he had finished his gruesome monologue the house was totally silent and it took Naruto a couple of seconds to realize that he hadn't stopped emitting ki. He eased off the ki and walked outside to meditate.

-- break --

Naruto had been outside for just under a half hour when he heard the front door close and two sets of footsteps come out to join him.

"Is it true what you said about most ninja having horrible lives? Why would anyone become a ninja if all you have to look forward to is death?" asked Tsunami.

"I didn't say that most ninja had horrible lives. Yes most will have seen the death of someone they care about before they retire or are killed but they learn to grieve on their downtime and to get over it. Yes our profession is surrounded by death, but that makes the connections we do make that much more valuable to us. If you know that you might die on your next mission you don't hold back with your friends and you do everything and anything with them the best you can. People become ninja for lots of reasons, because I'm an orphan being a ninja is probably the only way I'll get any respect when I'm older. When you live in a hidden village there are less opportunities for advancement in the social castes than in any other non-shinobi village. Some people start because they hear stories about ninja that glorify us and after having that image tarnished stick with it because they found a better reason. A lot of ninjas come from families that have been ninja for generations so it's like a birthright to them.

"I wasn't trying to scare you but I've had a harder life than most and when people just whine and complain about how bad theirs is it gets on my nerves. Sasuke had his whole family butchered in front of his eyes when he was six. Kakashi-sensei's father committed ritual suicide after a botched mission. Kakashi himself watched two of his teammates die on missions and his sensei sacrificed himself for the village. I'm treated like shit by basically everyone for something I can't control. Sakura is the only semi-normal ninja you've met but that's relative because she can crush rocks with her bare hands and that isn't considered normal anywhere, even among ninja." Naruto sighed. "Moral of the story is to grieve, learn something, and move on. Yes you loved your tousan, no you probably shouldn't pick on someone with so much more power than you have without backup, but that shouldn't stop you from trying to do _something_ about it."

Tsunami and Inari just sat silently beside Naruto for several minutes before he heard footsteps approaching.

"It sounds like you have company Tsunami. Are you expecting anyone?" Naruto asked.

"No"

"Then it seems it's time for me to earn my pay."

Naruto took two long steps forward to meet the two samurai who walked out onto the path. The three combatants stopped three meters apart and surveyed the competition. Naruto nodded to himself and let his hands drift to his kunai pouches.

"Look gaki, we came for the bitch and her brat. Step aside and you won't be hurt." said the first thug who was about as tall as Naruto and wearing a light blue hooded sweater with lots of pockets and a darker blue stocking hat.

"But I'd take it as a favor if you just stood there. _*laughter*_" claimed the second ronin who was taller by a head and bare-chested. He had his brown hair bound in a messy series of ponytails in a mockery of a samurai hairstyle that left three puffs in the middle of his head like an interrupted Mohawk. He had green tattoos twisting around his left arm which was clearly his dominate arm and an eye patch over his right eye. Naruto hoped that one of these fools would put up a decent enough fight to warm him up for Zabuza and Haku.

Naruto's response was nonverbal. He promptly tossed two kunai right at the ronin and was disappointed in their reactions. Even with his sword already halfway out of its sheath the shorter thug still took the kunai right in his throat and promptly started choking on his own blood. The second thug barely got his head out of the way fast enough and had a shallow cut in the side of his neck to show for it. In his favor was how he totally ignored the death of his partner and charged Naruto swinging his katana for a kill.

Naruto stood still.

He looked at the surprised ronin in boredom after calmly catching the blade in his left hand. With a sharp tug Naruto pulled the scarred and tattooed man towards him before stabbing him in the temple with another kunai. Naruto let the body drop where it was and sneered both in disappointment and in reaction to their apparent skill level.

"That was rather anticlimactic and somewhat pathetic wasn't it?" he deadpanned.

He turned to look at the totally shocked Tsunami and Inari before bowing shortly to them.

"My duty here is done. Gatou will not send any more men to your home but it would probably still be a good idea to go into town if you know of a safe place to do so. I imagine I am needed by my team and so I'll take my leave of you." He waited for a nod of understanding before he used Shunshin to get to the bridge disappearing in a gust of wind-gathered mist.

--

Sakura was bored with guarding. Even the imminent threat of Zabuza attacking had done nothing to increase her interest in it. The day she had guarded with Naruto she had at least had someone to talk to even if that meant including Tazuna and talking about bridge building and other things she didn't care about. Now that she was with Sasuke she knew that it would just be silent. She couldn't even count on the occasional shenanigans that Naruto seemed to draw out of other people because just like Naruto made people open up, Sasuke made them clam up. She could only imagine what it would be like with both of them together. Her money was on the workers laughing and making jokes shortly before feeling intensely awkward about it. It would make for either a very interesting or very stressful day she thought. Probably funny to an outside observer but irritating for the people involved she amended.

But that was not the here and now which was what she was concerned about. There was only so far chakra control exercises could take you towards alleviating boredom and they had already nearly used up in the half hour walk to the construction site. Sakura was now the proud practitioner of the skill to braid her own hair in two minutes using only the chakra emitted from her head to manipulate each strand like a wire. This accomplishment didn't earn either praise or conversation when she had demonstrated it fifteen minutes into the hike. She was now working on changing the length of her hair like one might change the length of a wire but this likewise was earning no conversation though it was giving her something to do and the occasional mistake that changed a chunk of her hair from mid-back length to dragging on the ground behind her was at least marginally amusing to both her and Tazuna.

She actually laughed to herself a little knowing that neither her sensei nor her teammate and crush could see the practical use for these skills. While she wasn't keen on the idea, in theory she could use her hair to attack someone if she was restrained. She was further amused when she thought of a similar skill that Naruto had shown her that allowed him to ring the bells on his head individually and with enough dexterity that songs could be distinguished. She would have to mention that he could lengthen his hair to use in his wire tricks next time she talked to him. She had no doubts that he wouldn't be the least bit squeamish about using strands of his hair to rip something or someone apart.

Her thoughts on her blonde teammate nearly stopped her in her tracks. _Why am I so concerned about Naruto? It seems like every time I have a good idea about a ninja technique I immediately want to tell him before anyone else. Shouldn't I want to tell Sasuke right away? __**Maybe it's because we know we'll be praised by Naruto-kun instead of dismissed like we're nothing.**__ Is that really why? And since when have we called him Naruto-_kun_? __**Well you haven't consciously yet but I've decided to look at what's in front of us and make the obvious changes.**__ What do you mean by that? __**I'm not going to explain it if you can't figure it out for yourself. I'll give you a hint though. It has to do with how our teammates treat us.**__ Hmmm. Well Naruto treats us well. He's very supportive and helps us out when he can. Kakashi-sensei tends to ignore us but I think that's normal for him. I saw him totally ignore this guy in an awful green jumpsuit once and it didn't seem out of the ordinary for them. Sasuke… well he doesn't treat us very well does he. In fact he treats us like shit. I think I know what you mean now. __**Well then it would be a good time for you to pay attention again because you're going to need to see this.**_

Sakura jerked abruptly to a stop when she saw the carnage on the bridge. There were bodies laying everywhere. Some had needles sticking out of them in odd places and looked, to her medic's eye, to be just unconscious not dead. Others were lying in pools of blood that were going to be fatal if they weren't already. Sakura nearly lost her lunch at the heavy cloying scent of blood in the air. She knew that killing was part of their profession but she didn't think she'd get so blatant a taste of it so soon. She put up a strong front when Kakashi had killed the Demon Brothers but that was just a fake to prove to Naruto that she wasn't a totally squeamish fangirl and that hadn't been paraded around messily right in front of her like this had.

Tazuna didn't seem to be doing any better. These men were people he knew and people he'd worked with for countless hours on what could be termed his life's work. Sakura noticed Kakashi's suddenly serious demeanor and sobered up quickly. She cast a sideways glance at Sasuke and found him white-faced and shaking to her surprise. Everyone knew about the Uchiha massacre and apparently Sasuke hadn't gotten over it just yet.

Sakura found herself wishing Naruto, the academy failure, were here instead of Sasuke, who by all evidence had stronger jutsu and was, on paper, a better ninja. She banished these unproductive thoughts from her head as she moved forward in front of Tazuna with kunai drawn. She actually wasn't sure when she'd pulled out the weapon but the change in her posture and her actions towards the aggressive seemed to snap Sasuke out of his funk.

The four moved forward cautiously and Sakura put away her kunai to perform a couple quick diagnostic jutsu on several workers festooned with needles. The results bore out her earlier conclusions that they were just unconscious and would be fine as soon as the needles were removed. With no danger of them dying she left them where they lay and stopped checking the additional bodies.

"The ones with needles in them are going to be fine Tazuna-san. They are just unconscious." This statement went a long way to, if not cheering up then calming the old man.

Sakura soon caught sight of two figures in the light mist over the bridge. It was the same swordsman as before wearing a new black sleeveless muscle shirt, identified at their earlier encounter as Zabuza by Kakashi, and the hunter-nin that had claimed the kill over Zabuza earlier. They stood casually at the end of the bridge as if waiting for them to show up and bring the bridge-builder to them like some kind of twisted courier service.

"Kakashi, it's unfortunate that you had to bring your brats here. Only death awaits them now." Zabuza said when they had gotten close enough to them. The former mist-nin formed several Mizu Bunshin and had them move forward. Sasuke eagerly showed off his newly improved speed by cutting the clones to pieces with a kunai.

"Well Haku it looks like there is some competition for speed here." commented Zabuza.

"Doubtful Zabuza-sama. He doesn't look that fast to me." was the dismissive reply from the masked kunoichi.

"Either way he is your responsibility. Deal with the brats and the bridge-builder. I want Kakashi all to myself."

With that Sasuke jumped forward to attack the hunter-nin head on. Kakashi looked as if he would go help his student but Zabuza cut him off and engaged him with a swipe that would have taken his head off had he not been as fast as he was. Sakura retreated away from the fight slightly while pushing Tazuna back with her.

"Why are we retreating away from them? Don't you want to help your teammate and sensei?" asked Tazuna.

"We're backing up because the mission is to keep you safe and I can't do that if we have to dodge errant jutsu. My teammate and sensei can take care of themselves until our other teammate gets here. My jutsu are long range anyway and unless they engage me fist to fist I'm not going to be any more help over there than I am over here."

Sakura punctuated her assessment by hurling a handful of senbon at the masked ninja that was picking apart Sasuke's taijutsu. The hunter-nin, Haku, was forced to dodge the incoming missiles which opened her guard and allowed Sasuke to get a hit in. Haku's response was to grab the offending wrist and tug herself back on balance.

--

"What are you going to do now girl?" asked Sasuke as he grabbed her wrist and reached for a kunai. "You can't jump away without risking a stab from me and you aren't capable of jutsu with one hand tied up. I'm insulted for being sent against a girl."

"Your arrogance is astounding. If I weren't going to kill you someone else would have done it soon. Here's a free lesson, never assume anything." She started doing one-handed handseals. "And not that it makes a difference but I'm a boy."

Sasuke's eyes widened as water droplets in the air elongated into senbon and the temperature around them dropped drastically. Sasuke prepared for whatever jutsu was coming.

"Aisu: Sensatsu Suishou" he heard Haku mutter. The needles, ice he realized, shot towards them. Sasuke tugged on Haku's arm and executed an academy hip throw before darting out of the focus of the needles. He picked up a good half dozen ice senbon anyway but it was far less than he might have. He was disappointed that none of the flying needles seemed to hit the masked shinobi.

Haku suddenly looked confused and looked around at nothing. Sasuke realized that Sakura had used a genjutsu against him and rushed in to capitalize on the distraction. Haku dropped three senbon into his hand from the sleeve of his battle kimono and held them like a set of claws in between each of his fingers. Sasuke's charge was greeted with sharp pain as Haku jabbed him with the needles in his hand. He followed up with a vicious knee to Sasuke's stomach that drove the genin back. Sasuke recovered quickly and disappeared in a burst of speed to reappear behind and to the left of the masked shinobi already throwing a flying spinning kick. Haku twisted around but not fast enough and took Sasuke's heel to the face. Sasuke paid dearly for his hit and had to pause to pull out a senbon from his calf.

Haku jumped back away from the immediate threat and tried to pinpoint the pink-haired kunoichi that was making his life so much more difficult. Satisfied that he had the general direction correct he threw a wide spread of ice senbon towards her with the intention of getting her to drop the genjutsu. He already knew that the kunoichi would have to hold it because a discreet kai had done nothing to disrupt the problem.

--

Sakura saw the needles thrown by Haku and she took a split second to appreciate the shinobi's accuracy while blind. It took a lot of practice to be able to hit anything with your sight impaired. She abandoned these thoughts in favor of pulling Tazuna to the ground and avoiding the needles. The consequence was making her drop her concentration and letting the genjutsu slip away.

She cursed quietly as Haku initiated another jutsu and she lost her opportunity to disrupt the fight in Sasuke's favor.

She turned her attention to her sensei's fight and tried to locate the combatants. If she could target Zabuza she could shorten that fight and get help to the horribly outclassed Sasuke faster. She finally found the sword carrying ninja. She knew that taking away his sight would be worthless. He was used to fighting without his eyes but maybe if she took his hearing. She flashed through handseals.

"Tsunbo no jutsu" she whispered and waited to see a difference.

--

Kakashi turned to Zabuza after the strike that nearly took his head off. He would have to end this quickly to help his student. Sasuke was outclassed if the short statements by the hunter-nin were correct. Unfortunately Sasuke's pride wouldn't allow him to back down or fight with delaying tactics. He lifted his hitai-ite immediately.

"Oh? Already getting serious are we? I was hoping for a warm up first. But if your not going to let me have any fun… Suiton: Kirigakure" chuckled Zabuza.

The mist around them rose up blocking Kakashi's view of his students and sharpening his focus on his opponent. Before he could ready himself properly he was dodging several water bullets shot from deep within the mist. Kakashi retaliated by overloading Raiton: Hibana to make the minor jutsu more than an annoyance. The mist carried the electrical current produced by the discharge from his hands through the air to Zabuza who took the pain without even a grunt.

Kakashi jumped forward and to the right to dodge the overhead strike from behind him. He spun and drew two kunai before quick-stepping forward to engage Zabuza while he could see him. Two deft steps and a slight twist put Kakashi in range. A quick slice and stab combo proved this Zabuza to be a water clone. Kakashi let the kunai hang by their rings from his thumbs as he went through handseals in a blur. At the end of the string a water dragon leapt from the sea beside the bridge and intercepted a similar dragon that was charging him, biting down on the attacking dragon's neck. Both dragons exploded in a spray of water drenching Kakashi and negating the advantage of any more wide area lightning jutsu.

"Suiton: Daibakufu" Kakashi heard from his right as a pillar of spinning, foaming water rushed him from the left. As the waterspout hit Kakashi he exploded into water. Zabuza spun bringing his sword across at waist height where it was stopped cold halfway through the swing by two kunai in Kakashi's hands. They disengaged once more.

Kakashi heard a footstep to the right and crept forward taking the initiative for the first time since the fight started. He found Zabuza frowning as if confused. He took his opportunity and broke silence in favor of speed. To his great surprise Zabuza didn't seem to hear him until he was close enough for a strike.

Blood arced away as Kakashi's kunai drew a trail through Zabuza's new shirt. Zabuza had managed to minimize the damage of the potentially fatal strike and he twisted away disappearing into the mist. Kakashi noticed Zabuza's hands go up in a sign to release genjutsu as the missing-nin spun and he guessed that the swordsman had been caught by his genin kunoichi with the aural genjutsu. He mentally applauded her and then cursed her for not focusing on Sasuke.

--

Sasuke watched as for the first time in the battle his opponent resorted to using two hands to form handseals.

"Your kunoichi teammate has made herself enough of an annoyance that I must show you my kekkei genkai. Aisu: Makyou Hyoushou welcome to my demonic mirrors." Sasuke watched flabbergasted as a complete hemisphere of closely spaced ice mirrors formed and Haku stepped back into one of the giant ice mirrors and suddenly appeared in all of them.

He immediately put it off as an illusion and tried to figure out which was the real thing. When he was pretty sure he knew where the real shinobi was he faked towards another while forming handseals of his own. At the last moment he spun and blasted three fireballs out of his mouth towards the mirror he'd pegged as the real one and the two next to it to cover possible dodging locations. He was shocked when all the fireballs landed and exploded harmlessly against the ice. There were no signs of the mirrors melting at all.

"Your fire is useless against my mirrors and I assure you that every image of me is capable of hurting you."

Sasuke almost whimpered as thousands of ice needles started coming from all directions at him and he had no choice but to begin dodging.

--

Sakura saw Kakashi connect with a hit on Zabuza after she had used her genjutsu. She knew that the same trick wouldn't work again and judging by the quick dispel that Zabuza used even as he was dodging Kakashi's strike any more attempts would earn her attention from him in the form of injury.

She was just resigning herself to staying on the sidelines when she felt a surge of chakra behind her. She grabbed Tazuna with one hand and dragged him to the side even as she grabbed a kunai and readied herself to attack whoever had the audacity to Shunshin into a battle.

Her attack wasn't needed because out of a gust of slightly misty air Naruto appeared. She was sure that you needed an element to make the teleportation work which was why all the Konoha shinobi had leaves whirling around them when they showed up and puffs of smoke when they left but Naruto only ever had a burst of wind to announce himself.

"Hey Sakura-chan, I hope you weren't going to use that on me. That wouldn't be very nice," he chuckled as he looked pointedly at the kunai in her hand.

"Oh thank Kami you're here." Sakura gushed.

"Well some days I don't but today _has_ been good so far so I guess I should." Tazuna just stared shocked at this byplay between teammates.

"Naruto! This isn't the time to be joking! You have to help Sasuke, he's way outclassed and I can't help anymore. He was just barely hanging on with that hunter-nin blinded." Naruto instantly sobered up and nodded.

"What do you know about her? What's the situation look like?"

"Well the hunter-nin is a guy to start with." Naruto frowned and shook his head but focused on the rest of Sakura's report, it really didn't matter what gender he/she was. "He's got some kind of bloodline that lets him use ice. He's created a bunch of ice senbon and sent them flying at Sasuke using one-handed handseals. They are in this dome of mirrors right now. I don't know what it does but he just slid right into one of the mirrors and then senbon started flying from every mirror I can see from here. Sasuke used Katon: Housenka and nothing happened to the mirror. The hunter-nin says that fire won't damage them." Naruto shook his head again at this.

"No, it just means that we don't have a high enough class jutsu to do it. I can't hit what I can't see so I'm going to have to go inside. Damn, right into the teeth of the tiger. Next time we're putting a leash on the teme so he can't fuck up so often." Sakura giggled at that imagery. "Try to help Kakashi as much as you can. Even spamming Zabuza with chakra could distract him by getting him thinking there's a genjutsu coming. I'm going to collect the bastard."

Naruto leapt off towards the dome of mirrors. He checked his tetsusukin to make sure it was fueled by enough chakra to stop a sword strike. He reached the edge of the mirrors and stopped to see if he could spot any weaknesses. Nothing as far as he could see, but he did get a much better idea of how it worked. There was no way, short of solid clones which he wasn't using, that Haku could be in multiple places at once. Naruto decided to drop the henge hiding his new features to see if his advanced eyes could see anything else. He could suddenly see movement.

All the other images of Haku were just that, images and his new eyes faded them out until he could tell what they were and where they were but could be recognized as illusions. He would have to look if this meant his eyes were genjutsu proof like the Uchiha. He turned his attention back to the task ahead. The trick of the jutsu was that the mirrors allowed teleportation between them so as the images threw illusionary senbon Haku would teleport around throwing handfuls of real senbon to create a damn good illusion of being in multiple places at once.

Naruto also noticed that Sasuke had finally activated the much vaunted Sharingan which meant that Naruto couldn't use any techniques he didn't want stolen around him. A closer glance at Sasuke confirmed that he was close to falling unconscious and a couple more volleys of senbon would finish off the process. Unless he did anything monumentally stupid Naruto would be able to go all out.

_Actually… _an idea popped into Naruto's head to prove beyond a doubt where Sasuke's loyalties lay. Naruto jumped forward to get inside the enclosure.

"Teme I can't leave you alone for five minutes and you're being beaten around by some sissy hunter-nin!"

"Naruto you idiot, you weren't supposed to come in! You'll get cut to pieces in here." Naruto smirked to himself at that comment. Little did Sasuke know but Naruto was in far less danger than Sasuke was.

The reunion was interrupted by another volley of senbon centered almost entirely on Naruto. Sasuke blurred as he moved around Naruto and took all the senbon for him. _Well holy shit, the bastard isn't a lost cause yet._ Naruto whipped around and caught his teammate before he hit the ground.

"Naruto I want you to promise me something. I want you to kill my brother for me since I can't do it." Sasuke coughed up some blood proving that one of the previous senbon had punctured his lung. Naruto decided to play along even though he knew that none of the multiple senbon sticking out of him were going to be fatal.

"Why can't you Sasuke? You'll be fine just you wait. Sakura-chan will fix you right up." Naruto thought his acting deserved an award of some kind. He had even forced his voice to tremor slightly towards the end.

"No, I'm finished here." Sasuke then slipped into unconsciousness. After double checking Sasuke was out Naruto started laughing.

"What a total emo pussy." Naruto shook his head. "I apologize for my teammate. He probably wasn't a very good fight and his arrogance doesn't lend itself to geniality. As arrogant as he is though he is my teammate and before we continue I was hoping I could move him outside the mirror so our other teammate can see to his injuries later."

"You seem awful sure of yourself." Haku replied.

"I'm much better than he is and he's in my way so even if he doesn't get treatment I'd like to move him. We can keep him inside the mirrors if you're worried he'll become a problem later." Haku barely nodded and was shocked when Naruto kicked Sasuke's body up and out of one of the gaps in the mirrors. She watched with morbid fascination as the body thudded onto the deck of the bridge. She turned back to the young man she'd met in the woods the other night and took in his changes. His ears were now pointed, his pupils were slits, and he was outfitted with a nasty set of claws to go with the other animalistic changes.

"I'd like to thank you for your warning in the woods that today would be the day you would attack."

Haku was now totally back on her metaphorical heels. This genin she had marked as having no skill beyond a large chakra capacity had known who she was and used some simple statements to put together some of their plans.

"How did you know I was the hunter-nin?" asked Haku.

"I have much more advanced senses than most humans. I matched your scent in the clearing with what little of the hunter-nin's scent I was able to distinguish when you took Zabuza away. You also paused when you noticed me in the clearing and you were far beyond the range of a civilian's senses. You were too graceful at night where an untrained person would have stumbled and had more trouble searching for herbs. Are we going to continue to converse or are we going to fight? I just killed two thugs and I must admit that my bloodlust is demanding a worthy adversary Haku-chan."

"I'm a boy," she replied automatically.

"Don't feed me that bullshit. I've got a very advanced sense of smell remember."

Not knowing how to respond to that Haku reverted to violence like every other human whose logic and lies have failed them.

--

Haku threw a handful of senbon into Naruto and was flummoxed when they just bounced off. Naruto raised his eyebrow as if to say 'well that didn't work, what are you going to try now' to her. Haku waited in the mirror as she tried to think of something. Her thought process was interrupted by a chakra encased fist that burst through the mirror she was taking refuge in.

Her head snapped back and she arced backwards with an almost graceful bend of her spine that followed her flight until she hit the ground on her back. She bounced painfully and felt her mask shatter and fall off her face. She rolled over to her right in time to see the rest of her mirrors shatter and revert back into water after the interruption in her concentration caused by Naruto's fist. She hauled herself to her feet and prepared to fight seriously.

She formed six handseals and called out her attack, "Aisu: Sogeki Hyouyari"

--

Naruto's eyes widened as seven spears made of glittering ice rushed at him faster than the senbon Sasuke had been previously dodging. He decided he didn't need to further test his tetsusukin and dodged left while spinning forward to close to a more comfortable distance. He rushed the petite kunoichi as she formed more handseals.

"Aisu: Souseiki Hyounaginata" she shouted and a one and ¾ meter naginata formed in her hands.

_Fuck! She would have to use a weapon I can't easily get around wouldn't she._ Naruto launched a handful of shuriken at her before forming four seals. The spinning blades multiplied from five to twenty-five and Haku was forced to use some fancy staff tricks to knock them all out of the air. Naruto took the chance afforded by the shuriken and Shunshin'ed behind her.

She was good. She whirled as soon as he appeared having already sensed the chakra spike but unable to move until all the shuriken were dealt with. Naruto pressed forward and buried his fist into her stomach before following that up with a knee to her face as she folded over. When her head snapped back Naruto closed backhand struck the single fist she was using to clutch her naginata with. The attack got her to let go but it cost Naruto a strike to the kidney. I say cost Naruto but it was likely that Haku regretted it more.

--

Naruto grabbed the offending forearm and in a move that reminded her of her short fight with Sasuke Naruto threw her over his hip and slammed her into the concrete of the bridge. Naruto dropped a knee directly where Haku's sternum should have been, but she proved her high water affinity by bending impossibly and wrapping her legs around Naruto's head in an effort to snap his neck with her thighs. In a burst of strength Naruto reared up and threw her behind him dislodging her from his neck.

She looked into his eyes and was surprised to see such glee at fighting. Naruto was laughing insanely and starting to radiate ki in ever increasing amounts. Haku shivered briefly as she thought about what this meant about how the fight might end. She would have to kill him to stop him. She hefted her ice naginata that she had retrieved after landing near it and took a fighting stance.

--

Naruto objectively knew he should end the fight quickly and see if he could help Kakashi but he couldn't make himself cease this entertainment. This battle was glorious! He'd never had this much fun before. He flashed through handseals again and blasted out a Kaze: Daitoppa before following his jutsu in to rejoin in hand-to-hand combat. Naruto didn't notice but even though he hadn't dropped the resistance seal he was speeding up significantly as the battle went on. His muscles were tearing and healing almost in the same moment as his chakra raced through his muscles healing them while screaming songs of blood and glory; death to his enemies.

--

Haku saw the handseals Naruto made and watched him unleash some sort of wind jutsu. She anchored herself to the bridge with chakra and blasted her own blade of wind to challenge the other jutsu by funneling chakra through her naginata's blade and releasing it in a chopping movement. The wind jutsus clashed and Haku's was brushed aside like it wasn't even there. She worried about such a powerful blast but wasn't able to dodge at that range and was forced to ride out the storm. She screamed as she felt the hidden blades bite into her skin and tear though her clothing. She had no time to think because as soon as the wind had passed she was forced into a fighting retreat desperately fending off a possessed genin with more bloodlust than she had seen in anyone except Zabuza-sama himself even while her injuries and blood loss robbed her of her strength.

--

Naruto laughed in joy as he continued attacking. He was barely avoiding the strikes of Haku's flawless spear work. He wasn't getting hit but neither was he able to get inside her guard to attack her directly. His new tantos flashed as he worked them both quickly in an effort to break her guard. He crossed his blades to block an especially powerful downwards chop and was just as surprised as Haku when the ice naginata's blade shattered. They both seemed to pause for a second to digest this new development. They had been so involved in the pure combat of parry and attack that this interruption caused both combatants no small measure of disappointment and shock.

In his shock Naruto cleared through his instinctual bloodlust and came back to himself. He decided he needed to end the fight quickly. He spiked his chakra though the resistance seal to allow himself faster movements. He disappeared in a blur of pure speed; Haku who had just barely been able to keep up near the end of their repartee couldn't follow or avoid. Naruto slammed the hilt of one of his tantos into her temple knocking her out for the remainder of the fight. Not taking any chances Naruto trussed her up in wire even as he heard a screaming that reminded him partially of birdsong and partially of a tesla coil he'd seen once.

He looked up into the dissipating mist to see Kakashi had his hand sticking into Zabuza's chest. Naruto noticed a considerable electrical discharge crawling up Kakashi's arm and assumed that the noise was the technique's execution. The five large dogs with a hitai-ite for each that had been holding Zabuza disappeared in individual puffs of smoke back to wherever summoned animals go. With the puffs of smoke from the summoned creatures Naruto remembered to put up his partial henge before Kakashi saw him.

--

Sakura noticed the mist clearing as she pulled the senbon out of Sasuke taking care not to damage him even more. She was going to give Naruto a piece of her mind though. She was sure that he was the idiot that was responsible for the large bruise forming on Sasuke's ribs. Once she'd taken the last senbon from Sasuke's neck he coughed and she felt safe in turning to look at the results of the battle.

As expected she saw Kakashi had killed Zabuza with a hand through his chest. Not unexpected but nonetheless pleasant was the sight of Naruto standing over a wire trussed former fake hunter-nin. The source of the inevitable unpleasantness that typically accompanied several pleasant revelations was at the finished end of the bridge.

Gatou had come out to play. He'd brought what looked like fifty friends. Most of his friends brought toys that didn't look pleasant. Sakura bet that Gatou's friends didn't play fair or nicely either. She decided that Naruto must have still been riding the high he got whenever he had a good fight because he struck first.

Sakura rationalized it later that Gatou would have eventually ordered his men to attack but at the time it was very hard to not yell at Naruto for throwing that kunai. Predictably he'd chosen the worst target possible and had planted the knife right between Gatou's eyes before the short and thoroughly unpleasant billionaire had said a thing. In hindsight Sakura was impressed with Naruto's heretofore unnoticed fantastic accuracy. He'd hit a bull's-eye at twenty meters with enough force to snap Gatou's head back and put him on his back straightaway.

The mercenaries weren't so appreciative.

"You little punk! You just cost us our meal-ticket and now we're gonna take it outta yer hide!" yelled one particularly articulate thug. His answer was more laughter from Naruto.

Sakura might have drawn attention to herself by yelling at Naruto but she was worried that the mercenaries would target Sasuke in his weakened state. Instead she watched what couldn't be called negotiations even by a naïve optimist.

"You want my hide come take it from me! Stronger men than you have tried and I still have yet to show a scar from it." Naruto taunted them. Naruto didn't wait for their response before flashing though handseals and blasting out a Kaze: Daitoppa which ripped thought their ranks.

Literally

Sakura nearly revisited her lunch for the second time that day as she saw men torn to pieces as they were picked up and tossed around like rag dolls by the blast of chakra saturated wind. Naruto suddenly dropped all traces of humor and spiked his ki to levels beyond what he had used when they first met Zabuza.

"Leave now if you value your life. None of you are even a challenge to any of us here and we will all gladly kill each man who stays. Your employer is dead there is no reason to stay." Naruto delivered in his coldest voice.

All the mercenaries took off like the very hounds of hell were nipping at their heels helped along by two more Kaze: Daitoppa's courtesy of Naruto.

-- break --

Kakashi had decided in light of Naruto's actions that they should tend the workers that could be saved and then they should guard the town from the legion of newly rogue mercs. This seemed to translate as Sakura administering medical aid while Sasuke ran for the town healer and Naruto got chewed out for his reckless actions.

But even this translation was flawed because Sakura with her usual efficiency had healed everyone she was able to before Sasuke ever got back. Sasuke had to beat up two mercenaries in town and decided that staying there was a better option than returning because of the much higher likelihood of a fight in town than the bridge. Naruto had listened to about two minutes of lecture from Kakashi before he interrupted and asked how Kakashi would have dealt with it, when Kakashi didn't have an answer Naruto seemed to take the whole previous lecture as just an opportunity that Kakashi had taken to rip into him. After allowing Kakashi to stick his own foot in his mouth, Naruto returned to guarding his prisoner and looking out for any mercs stupid enough to hang around.

It was now two days after the bridge incident and thanks to a sleeping jutsu Kakashi had taught Sakura there was no longer a need for Naruto to constantly guard Haku and he had taken to mercenary hunting in his free time. There had been some conversation on what they would do with Haku but the consensus seemed to be that she was Naruto's responsibility and that anything bad that happened because of her would fall squarely on his shoulders.

Sasuke had fully healed up and was training with a vengeance.

Sakura was taking advantage of the plentiful water to perform her katas underneath it.

Kakashi was reading his little orange book of smut.

Naruto was getting ready to wake up Haku while nobody was around.

Haku opened her eyes after Naruto's chakra pulse disrupted the jutsu's effects. She blinked several times before she realized that she had no idea where she was and she began taking stock of her surroundings.

"You're safe, though I'm sure you don't trust me on that, and no one has touched you in a way that could be deemed inappropriate in civilized company. You are in a bed upstairs at Tazuna-san's house. He is the bridge-builder you were contracted to kill. The contract is void, I killed Gatou myself." Haku listened intently to detect a lie and satisfied herself that there was none which was confirmed by what she could tell about herself. She knew it was Naruto speaking. His was a voice you didn't soon forget after fighting him. "Zabuza was also killed by my sensei. If it helps, he died a good death on his feet and fighting. It's been decided that you will accompany us back to Konoha under my protection. I'm not well liked in my village so the slightest mistake on your part, any aggressive move, any minor law violation, any slight disrespect to someone in power and both of us will be killed. I heard from Sasuke that you considered yourself Zabuza's weapon."

Haku nodded dumbly. "That's correct."

"In that case it might be easiest for you to consider yourself my spoils. I'm not going to use you sexually or anything like that but it is permissible and even acceptable to restock your weapons pouch with your enemy's or even take weapons of quality as spoils. This is only an idea that might help you accept these abrupt changes. Personally I would prefer you act like a reasonable human being doing the right thing because she doesn't have many options left to her."

Haku digested this new development for a moment before nodding.

"I think I will think of myself as a captured weapon Naruto-sama." Naruto nodded bowing to the inevitable. In the end it was probably for the best because he had no intention of keeping her. He actually had an idea of where Haku would end up and if he had any say in it she would end up helping one of his earliest friends with her confidence problem. "You aren't allowed to leave this room yet but if you'd like to stay awake why don't you tell me about yourself?"

Haku started explaining her life along with some of the background that would help him understand the reasons behind her harsh early years and soon the hours flew by and Sakura was coming in with dinner. After her dinner all three talked about many things, senseis, jutsu, medical jargon, and plants were just some of the topics and by the end of the night a startled Haku realized that the bloodthirsty blonde had somehow become her first friend and had dragged the pink-haired kunoichi along for a close second place.


	9. Chapter 8

The next day Team 7 plus Haku started to make their way back to Konoha utilizing tree-jumping to get there faster and they were assumed to be there by the end of the day.

Naruto was of conflicting opinions about returning home. He was glad to be back among people he could, at least marginally, trust. He was excited to tell the several people who knew the 'real' him how the mission had gone.

On the other hand, he was unhappy that so many of his skills had come to light. He was a realist above his optimism and he knew that no matter how much the mist during the fights had hidden he knew that either Sasuke would blab or someone would begin connecting dots and drawing better pictures of his abilities and skills.

Also there was the matter of being hated by nearly every villager and those that didn't actively hate were apathetic and that was almost worse.

To keep his mind off his imminent return he began thinking about Haku and the problems she presented. He wouldn't be able to keep her around him for several reasons but that left the question of who could sponsor her. He needed someone who he trusted which narrowed down his options heavily. He needed someone who had good standing in the eyes of the Hokage and was liked by the ninja that knew them. He would prefer that they had the support of the ninja they knew but that wasn't necessary. That left two ninja that knew him: Sakura and Hinata. Of the two Hinata knew him better and he was more inclined to have Hinata take Haku because she would be more able to answer the difficult questions that Haku would ask. Actually that would be the perfect place for Haku. With a totally loyal confidant Hinata might gain some confidence and Haku would be able to help Hinata with her ninja skills.

With that problem all but solved and after some healthy mental pats on the back, Naruto turned his mind to how he would handle the questions regarding his skill. The improved taijutsu he could handle because Sarutobi-sama already knew about his new instructor in that area. His bloodlust would be harder to explain. He knew that he would have to tell the old man about the changes to his body and mentality but first he needed a way to spin it away from the captive fox. That would be hard to do, if not impossible, without Sakura's permission to reveal her operation.

Naruto kept secrets with a nearly religious zealotry. He knew the value of restricted information and what that could mean for a person on an intimate level so it was only natural to hold secrets with that highest honor. The bigger the secret the more sacred it became in Naruto's mind and he had even developed several countermeasures for jutsu like the Yamanaka clan was rumored to have.

There was also the problem with Sakura being able to throw a kunai and have it turn into himself. That would be impossible with a normal henge as those were just illusions meant to trick the eye and nothing else. If someone used a normal henge to change into a kunai they would still have the same mass and volume as that person. A normal henge wouldn't make someone any easier to throw though it might distract the target thinking it was a normal kunai. Naruto's henge classified as a ninjutsu as opposed to a genjutsu because it affected the physical not just what a person perceived as the physical.

He finally decided to ask Sakura for her permission to reveal her secret just in case he couldn't pass off his trick as a kawarimi with the kunai while it was in flight. The more he thought about it the more plausible the kawarimi trick seemed. After all, his hero was the fourth Hokage and the Yondaime had a jutsu that was similar, pulling himself to a thrown kunai. Naruto nodded to himself. That explanation should work.

--

Sasuke couldn't wait to get back to Konoha where he could begin training to the fullest extent again. He wasn't happy that Kakashi had forced them to restrain their training and now that he had two new fire jutsu he was going to take advantage of them to improve his control over the fire element.

Another thing that was driving him to Konoha faster than he might have otherwise exerted himself to was the silent kunoichi next to him. He had been soundly trounced by her but she had been beaten in turn by Naruto which he was having a hard time with. The only thing that he could come up with to sooth his pride was that he had softened her up for Naruto but he knew deep down that wasn't true. Naruto had defeated an opponent that had been toying contemptuously with him and that rankled Sasuke. So he was pushing hard to Konoha to escape the awkwardness of the situation as soon as possible.

--

Sakura was chomping at the bit to get back to Konoha. She had several things that were practically gnawing at her. She was both excited and nervous about what would happen to Haku. Whatever happened she hoped that she would be able to see and talk with the older kunoichi again. There was so much she could learn about being a ninja by picking the brains of the more experienced kunoichi even if Haku didn't seem to embrace her gender as an advantage.

She also needed to know how Naruto had gotten much better at a taijutsu style she had never seen before. She wasn't jealous of him she just wanted to know how he had learned it. She decided after seeing him fight that she needed something better than the academy standard which would mean that she needed to talk to someone who knew a better style. She also had seen the problem of revealing too many of Naruto's, and her own, secrets in their mission report. She didn't know how much Kakashi had seen but nobody who had been an ANBU captain could miss how quickly they had picked up the exercises he had given them. If that didn't tell him outright that they were better than they let on then it would at least alert him to watch them closer. She actually resigned herself to revealing her physical strength. It made the most sense between the two important techniques that could be revealed here. Her strength would come out eventually anyway and it would probably be soon so it made sense to explain her strength as the reason she was able to throw a henged person. Naruto's version of henge was made to fool people so it didn't make sense to reveal it when he could most certainly cover it up for much longer until he got to a point that he could realistically pass it off as a very advanced genjutsu henge.

The thing that was most important to Sakura however was Naruto's attitude while fighting. She knew that he sometimes got far more excited in dangerous spars than he probably should but what she had seen during the fights on the mission was taking it to a whole new level. She wouldn't ever voice her concern to anyone before talking to Naruto about it but it worried her nonetheless. She found after much introspection though that it wasn't how dangerous he could become to his allies while under a bloodlust high that worried her but rather that he might fight through serious injuries and in the post-battle high forget to get them healed and accidentally kill himself.

The idea that she was more concerned about Naruto's safety and wellbeing than her own health or Sasuke's or Kakashi-sensei's was a rather shocking revelation. Rather than worry about that though she decided to talk to Naruto about his behavior changes and what they might mean to her and maybe more of her feelings towards her blonde teammate would be defined more clearly.

--

Haku wasn't sure what she was feeling.

She wasn't all that used to letting herself experience her feelings at all so that was probably part of it.

She was glad that she still had a purpose but she had the feeling that her purpose didn't want her. At the same time he informed her that he would not be the best person to wield her he had promised to take care of her. Yes, she decided she was happy about that.

She was also confused and worried. He had said he wasn't well liked in his home but that she mustn't do anything about it. How would she be a good tool if she was constantly blunted or her wielder was hesitant to use her? She was confused about how to be of use and worried that she might no longer be.

She finished up her cocktail of emotions with a generous dose of curiosity. She wondered what her new home would be like. She wondered what she would do when they got there. She wondered what Naruto would have her do. She wondered what he meant by taking care of her even if he wasn't the best choice. She wondered about a lot of things.

--

Kakashi was becoming more and more eager for this mission to be over. He was being presented with things that didn't mesh with what he knew to be true at increasingly frequent intervals and he didn't like it. So far his prize student had been beaten by a rouge shinobi that had been subdued by his worst student. The kunoichi that he'd thought would be a worthless fangirl at the beginning of their interaction as a team was turning out to be surprisingly competent. Most irritatingly at the moment however had to be the enemy shinobi that they were bringing back to Konoha. If that was going exactly as described it wouldn't be a problem but they were bringing him back as 'spoils of war' which confused him greatly. It wasn't like the boy was a weapon or and incredibly lifelike puppet that you could claim as spoils. It just didn't make sense and as soon as they got back and made their initial report he was going to go back to his apartment and take the time he would normally use to write a more complete mission report to think about all the inconsistencies that had been revealed in the last two plus weeks preferably with a large bottle of sake to help smooth out the gaps.

-- break --

Team 7 plus Haku trudged into the Hokage's office at 6pm and were escorted immediately to the Hokage. The old man looked them over carefully and decided that the look of incredible stress on the jonin's face merited a much shortened debriefing.

"Welcome back Team 7. I assume that your mission was successful?" he asked. After receiving nods from all of the members he continued. "Well I'll wait for your reports to determine exactly how successful you were but tonight I think we'll just stick to the major issues. Who is this new person in my office and why are they here?"

Kakashi took responsibility for answering and even though Naruto probably knew more about the situation the blonde wanted to see what his sensei knew about it so he could keep his story similar enough to not be questioned. At least not questioned in company he didn't fully trust such as the kind that was represented in the room by Sasuke and his sensei.

"Hokage-sama this is Haku a shinobi that was hired to kill Tazuna-san." Here Kakashi paused for Sarutobi to scowl and focus his sharp gaze upon Haku; having a shinobi attack was not part of a C-rank mission. "We brought him back to Konoha because the shinobi who trained him was a missing-nin at the time and after his sensei and partner was killed by myself, Haku had no allegiance or animosity to any village. Naruto has agreed to take responsibility for Haku's presence and it was he who suggested bringing him back with us."

The Hokage swung his gaze to the blonde teenager in question his gaze demanding an explanation.

"Haku's training has been much different from ours ojiisan. He was trained to be nothing more than a tool and as such responded accordingly when I claimed Zabuza's other weapons as spoils." Here Naruto was interrupted when Sarutobi turned to Kakashi and demanded an answer.

"You continued the mission after making contact with one of the seven swordsmen of the mist?! What is your problem? That is at least and A-rank mission at that point and even if you knew you could defeat Zabuza bringing a genin team along is the height of foolishness!"

Naruto had very seldom heard the kindly Hokage yell but when he did he remembered why the nickname 'the Professor' was feared during the Great Shinobi Wars. He didn't want to be in Kakashi's shoes as the student of both the Nidaime and the Shodaime stared him down.

"With respect Hokage-sama, the genin agreed to continue the mission after meeting resistance in the form of the much less dangerous Demon Brothers on the road to Wave and Zabuza would have tracked us down and killed us after we saw him use Haku in a clever deception to escape death by having Haku impersonate a mist hunter-nin and interrupt the killing blow by putting Zabuza in a state of false-death." The Hokage nodded at that. Any high-level missing-nin who had found a decent way to evade the hunter-nin's of their country would kill to keep the secret hidden.

"So you were effectively locked into the mission after meeting Zabuza then." Sarutobi nodded in reluctant acceptance and motioned Naruto to continue.

"Anyway, with no allegiance to a hidden village and a mentality like his, Haku would be used to make some minor thug or yakuza boss very dangerous so it made more sense to take him with us when we left wave. Unfortunately while Haku remains convinced he is a tool and not a person with his own individual will, dreams, hopes, etc. he will only be loyal to one person and since I was the one to defeat him I was his logical choice as a new master. Unfortunately I can't take care of him as I should so I was hoping to talk to you after this is over to get him transferred to another shinobi I have in mind."

Sarutobi nodded and pondered this new development for awhile. After a moment's thought he decided to hear out Naruto's suggestion and decide further from there but to do that he had to finish the overall debriefing. He motioned for Kakashi to continue.

"After meeting the Demon Brothers and fending off their attack the decision was made to continue the mission in light of the possible importance of its completion. We were engaged by Zabuza without Haku once we were nearly at our destination. I fought Zabuza to a point where he could be finished off but Haku playing the roll of a hunter-nin jumped in. Haku put Zabuza in a near-death state with several senbon and hauled off Zabuza to heal him. After Haku had left I collapsed from chakra exhaustion. We then guarded Tazuna both at his house and at the bridge for twelve days until Zabuza made another attack this time with Haku alongside. Naruto was at Tazuna's house where he protected the family from ronin before using Shunshin to join us at the bridge. Sasuke made the initial contact with Haku while Sakura gave support from a distance via sense impairing genjutsu while she guarded Tazuna. I fought with Zabuza himself during which he covered the battlefield with mist so I wasn't able to see Sasuke's fight nor did I see Naruto's arrival. From descriptions by my team I can assume that Haku used a bloodline jutsu that allowed control of ice to beat Sasuke when Naruto jumped in from outside the area of effect of the jutsu and after a while defeated Haku. After I killed Zabuza with my Chidori and the mist cleared Gatou, the person who hired missing-nin to kill Tazuna, showed up with fifty thugs and ronin. Naruto killed Gatou with a thrown kunai and scared off or killed the rest of the men with several Kaze: Daitoppa which he has mastered well enough to add wind blades to. We then spent the next two days recovering enough to return home." Sarutobi nodded to all this as Kakashi made his report in a dispassionate tone. Naruto and Sakura were amazed at the sheer volume of information that the jonin was leaving out of the report and they hoped that his written report would be much more comprehensive if not more complementary towards them.

"Thank you Kakashi. Team 7 you are dismissed I expect to see individual assessments of the mission on my desk in two days from each of you. Kakashi will of course help you with how you are supposed to do them. Naruto stay behind; I wish to speak with you about our new visitor."

Naruto nodded and retook his seat as the rest of the team shambled out. Once they were out of the door and had closed it Sarutobi looked at Naruto as if to demand an explanation.

"Okay ojiisan several things. First, Haku is a girl not a boy. Second, Haku doesn't actually consider herself a tool but she is very _violently_ loyal to only a single person. Those two things should help explain why I can't keep her around my place. I don't have the money to feed her. She would also be under constant observation to make sure I'm not trying to get any convoluted sort of revenge vicariously though her." Sarutobi wasn't surprised with Naruto's suddenly improved vocabulary. He knew from several sessions of watching his taijutsu training with their mutual summons that Naruto was hiding most of his abilities and sadly Sarutobi still couldn't think of a good reason for Naruto to stop. He almost shook his head at the ridiculous lengths some would undoubtedly go to prove that Naruto was actually the demon that he housed. "I was thinking of a kunoichi that would be able to handle having Haku as an _assistant_ of sorts."

"Go on Naruto," sighed the Hokage.

"Hinata-chan is the best person I can think of to help Haku. She already knows the relevant details about me to answer Haku's foreseeable questions. She knows how much I'm hiding from everyone and most importantly I trust her implicitly." This raised the Hokage's eyebrows.

"You mean that you have somehow corrupted a generation of my ninja by teaching them to hide things from everyone including their academy senseis? You know of her crush on you? Or is that a fantasy too? Should I be worried about more of my new genin knowing much more than they should?" asked Sarutobi in a mildly joking tone of voice.

"We actually met because of her crush. I wasn't as adept at hiding when she found me and later she was the one who helped me improve. It's thanks to her that I can now hide from the Hyuuga. She was my first friend and although she used to have a crush on me she's now using that common knowledge to hide something else that she thinks could possibly harm her even more with respect to her clan. You know I won't reveal any more of her secrets unless I have permission. If there are any more genin hiding things I don't know about them either." Sarutobi nodded at the flippant way Naruto addressed the possibility of his classmates hiding things (like the boy fully expected them too and would be disappointed were they not) and focused on what Naruto said about Hinata's secrets. He knew that secrets were sacred to Naruto and nothing short of the apocalypse would make him talk… even that was no guarantee though.

"Hinata is influential and well liked. Haku wouldn't be under suspicion with her. The only downside is her father and her clan. If you made it an order or some sort of extended mission the Hyuuga influence would be negated. The upside is that Haku would learn how to be more human and Hinata would learn to be more kunoichi." Naruto continued as Sarutobi chuckled.

"You say that as if they are different."

"They aren't?" asked Naruto with genuine surprise. "I know that all kunoichi are technically female but that doesn't make all girls kunoichi nor does it make kunoichi act like girls."

"True… but you have forgotten to ask Hinata and Haku about this. If you want Haku to act like a girl and not a tool you must treat her as such." Naruto hung his head at this. "But your idea has merit and I will call for Hinata to come here now so we can work this out. In the meantime I'd like to talk about how you're doing after taking a life."

"I know how you might be concerned but I think I'm handling it well. I'm a little worried that I enjoyed it at the time and my bloodlust frightens me a little but I did feel remorse after until I could tell myself it was necessary. Before you say anything I don't think the Kyuubi is responsible for my actions I'm sure I would have felt that."

"It sounds like you're doing fine and are being normal about it if we disregard your unusual eagerness for battle, but we've discussed that before when you entered the academy. Hinata should be here in about ten minutes. I suggest you talk to Haku about what she can expect and perhaps if you trust her you should explain more about your condition." Naruto nodded at this and waved Haku over from the corner of the room she had been standing in to talk to her in whispers.

-- break --

Hinata walked into the room with a confused look on her face. She blushed when she saw Naruto.

"H-h-Hokage-sama what c-can I do for you?" she asked.

"You can drop the crush and stutter Hinata-chan."

"Naruto! How could you tell him?! It might get back to my father!" she yelled at Naruto as she whirled around simultaneously changing drastically from the introverted eleven-year-old she had been when she walked in.

"There is a situation that I need your help with that you might benefit from but it meant that I had to tell Hokage-sama about us knowing and trusting each other. It's pretty hard for the Hokage to believe that we trust each other completely if I pretend to be oblivious about your readily apparent crush on me and he assumes from that evidence that you haven't told me about it."

"Still Naruto-kun, we decided to keep that fiction going to mislead my father and with his seat on the council he might hear something about this. You know how much trouble I could get in if he thought you returned it! Which he would think if he heard you knew about it and I still professed to have a crush on you." Hinata was becoming hysterical at the thought of her father finding out. Sarutobi was beginning to get angry and worried about the possible explanations for Hinata being that scared of her father's disapproval.

"It's okay Hinata-chan; nobody's going to tell your father." Sarutobi assured Hinata. She started to calm down enough for Naruto to take over the explanation.

"You know that I had a C-rank mission right?" asked Naruto. Hinata nodded in affirmation. "Well it got upgraded in route to a high A-rank because we met some powerful shinobi. We continued with it anyway and succeeded. Now we're back and this is where you come in. This is Haku." Naruto indicated the kunoichi behind him. "_She_ was one of the ninja that attacked us. Before you freak out!" added Naruto in a rush. "She doesn't have any allegiance to anyone except the guy who trained her to be a ninja and he died at Kakashi's hands. She thinks that ninjas are just tools to be used by other ninja and as a ninja herself that's her fate or destiny or whatever. Long story short I need you to take care of her for me. She's agreed to the switch and you can use her help more than I can. She can help you with your father and improve your ninja techniques. Ojiisan would make it a mission so your father can't do anything about it."

Hinata looked stunned at that for a moment and turned to Haku and began looking her over. To the Hokage it might have looked like she was attempting to divine how much truth there was in Naruto's statements or perhaps how much trouble Haku was going to be for her and if it would be worth it. Naruto however knew differently and because he knew differently Naruto knew the truth of that stare.

Naruto knew what Hinata was hiding behind her fake crush for him. Hinata was a lesbian and the stare she was using to look at Haku told Naruto that Hinata found Haku attractive and was wondering how close they would become over the course of this 'mission'.

Hinata herself had already decided to do whatever Naruto needed of her as soon as she heard him say 'I need your help'. It wasn't often Naruto asked for help, but when he did, it was always important and he truly believed that the person he asked would be the best qualified person for whatever he needed. Now she was just trying to decide how to introduce Haku to her family and what she would say to ease the process as much as possible. The fact that she was using the intervening time to check out this tasty looking piece of female flesh was just a bonus for her. It was a good thing that she had long ago learned how to control her blushes on command or she would be beet red and possibly panting slightly as she took in Haku's elegant neck, slim figure, delicate hands, long fingers that she could think of so many naughty uses for… _NO Hinata! You promised yourself that you wouldn't be a pervert like Naruto-kun! Although, I do wonder what Naruto has to say about her, he's probably seen much more of her than I can see right now. *giggle*_

"I'll take this mission Hokage-sama." Hinata said in a strong voice while nodding to herself. "If you said that she was the candidate for an arranged marriage or something similar that we were trying to bring into the village it would go over well and he would leave us mostly alone about it. He might even leave me alone about being weak if it seemed she were important and I was asked for specifically." The last part was said in a whisper that even being incredibly soft was heard by all the ninja in the room. Sarutobi barely managed to hide a severe frown caused by this new bit of information. He would most certainly be looking into the Hyuuga clan practices; in fact maybe he could use Haku in that capacity if she proved trustworthy and willing.

"There is no need to pretend anything Hinata-chan. Haku is the possessor of an advanced kekkei genkai that allows the mixture of water and wind elemental chakra to create ice jutsu. So we could be totally truthful about wanting her to join the village and not have to worry about Hiashi discovering our subterfuge." Hinata looked surprised at this and decided that she could justify taking another look at Haku under the pretense of checking the validity of the previous statement, so she did. She smiled to herself as she took in Haku's overall figure this time. The loose masculine kimono hid her curves well but once she knew to look for them Hinata could certainly appreciate their subtle evidence. It was like guessing what was in a present based on the size of the gift. The anticipation was sweet agony. Hinata tuned back in to the Hokage's explanation of how Haku might be presented to Hiashi to lessen the unpleasant backlash.

--

Naruto almost rolled his eyes at Hinata. He knew she wasn't listening to the Hokage. As much as she tried to deny it Hinata was a pervert of the same magnitude he was. He idly wondered if he should have warned Haku but he brushed this aside with the knowledge that it would require he break Hinata's confidence and he wasn't going to do that no matter what. Actually now that he though about it he'd have to make sure that he was around the Hyuuga compound occasionally during times that Hinata and Haku were mostly alone, that could be very _enlightening_. Naruto broke out in his lecherous grin that tended to make him look disturbingly like an impish fox about to pull a prank.

--

Hinata caught Naruto's lips twitching before they curved up into a smile she recognized from when he wore it looking at her. _Oh dang, he figured out that he can come and watch what Haku-chan and I get up to when were alone and I've persuaded Haku-chan that there are some additional _duties_ involved in helping me. But that has a whole different kind of excitement to it as well. *giggle* Maybe we should just let him watch._ Hinata turned back to the Hokage and continued listening to what he was going to explain to her father when he came the next day so she would know what to tell him when he got back.

--

Soon they were finished ironing out the details and it was decided that Haku would go home with Hinata that very night. The working explanation was that Team 7 had found a wandering-nin that had shown an unusual proficiency in ice jutsu, when questioned she had told them that her family had always been able to use ice jutsu before they were killed in the mist bloodline purges and Team 7 had assumed that to mean she had a kekkei genkai and had subsequently offered her a home in Konoha where she would be welcomed for it. She would be assumed to be high chunin-level but they would have to test her later to make sure. Since she showed an interest in medical jutsu she would be tested at the hospital later in the week and prior to that Hinata was to accompany her there to take lessons and review what Haku already knew. Because she had received most of her training from Zabuza she had decided to take the clan name Momochi in honor of the generosity that had likely saved her life as a young girl.

When they were totally finished and satisfied with the result Hinata left taking Haku with her.

"Is there something else you wanted to talk to me about Naruto-kun?" asked Sarutobi.

"There is something but I'll need permission from Sakura-chan to reveal her part in it. I'm not sure how much I can tell you without her permission beyond that she was there when it happened so I just wanted to give you a heads up I suppose. Regardless of her answer I'll be in here later this week probably with my report to talk to you about some changes I've been going through." With that cryptic statement Naruto got up and left the office.

-- break --

Sakura had taken off to find Ino as soon as she was dismissed by Kakashi. She needed to satisfy her need for local gossip, learn what she'd missed while on the mission, and some help sorting through her feelings for her blonde-haired teammate. It didn't take long to find the other important blonde in her life eating at a barbeque with her teammates.

"Ino, I need you to come with me!" exclaimed Sakura even as she pulled Ino out of her seat. Even being careful about how hard she gripped her, Sakura was not about to be resisted. "Sorry about the interruption Asuma-sensei but it's really important that I talk to Ino."

Asuma chuckled a little. He didn't honestly think that it was important but he was far more observant than most with regards to his genin and he saw that even pulling away as hard as she could Ino couldn't break Sakura's grip. Actually now that he thought about it, that seemed weird. Ino was visibly straining for a bit before she bowed the inevitable but Sakura didn't even look like she could tell the difference. Given Ino wasn't very strong but she should still have enough force to break out of a one-handed grip on her upper arm. Apparently Sakura was much stronger than she looked and given the evidence she was much stronger than was naturally possible too. This deserved looking into, but since it wasn't being bragged about he assumed there was a reason to keep it quiet and therefore he would have to keep his inquiries subtle as well. He would ask Ino when she got back, her response would determine the nature of his actions. "That's fine Sakura. We were done for the day anyway."

"Forehead, you better have a very good reason for this!" yelled Ino as she was pulled away.

"We'll talk when we get somewhere quiet, Ino-pig!" whispered Sakura harshly.

-- break --

Ino looked around Sakura's room as was her habit when she was over there. Much had changed since the last time she was up here though. She was a little intimidated by the overwhelming number of medical books, technique scrolls and other ninja perihelia. It was still a girly room done almost entirely in different shades of pink but there was now a strange and pleasant dichotomy with the feminine overtones and random dangerous tools lying around.

"So what is so important that you have to drag me off like I'm some sort of luggage? And when did you get so strong? You didn't even strain when I tried to pull out of your grip, I better not have a bruise by the way."

"I know we're not really all that great of friends anymore Ino but I needed someone to talk to after that last mission." Sakura admitted. "Lots of things changed when I was out there and I don't want to fight with you all the time anymore. But mostly I want back my best friend so we can talk about boys and cosmetics tell each other our secrets and just be able to pretend for a little bit that we aren't paid to kill people and that we aren't risking our lives on nearly every mission we take." All of this came out in a fast rush that left Sakura breathless and feeling like a huge weight was off her chest. She also found, possibly to her detriment, she couldn't stop once she started.

"Our last mission was a total fuckup. Nothing went right and now I know exactly what ninja are and even though I'm going to stick with it and not quit I _need_ to have an outlet. I watched Naruto kill thirty mercenaries using three of the same jutsu and I know for a fact that he went out at night and hunted down the other twenty… You can't tell anyone about this! Not even your sensei or teammates this falls under girl-talk! I don't know why but Naruto isn't well liked here and I don't want to make it worse. But Naruto killing isn't the worst thing! _I've_ killed too! Just once and I talked to Kakashi-sensei and Naruto about it but I'm still a little freaked out about it." Sakura was rambling now and quickly ramping up to hysterical and Ino, who had been very shocked at first (and really still was), needed to calm her down if she wanted to get a comprehensible story.

"Whoa, slow down Sakura! You need to take a deep breath and tell me all about your mission slowly." Sakura calmed down at this and started to tell Ino about their mission to wave.

-- break --

"…and now I'm talking to you but after we're done I need to go talk to Naruto." Sakura finished with a gusty sigh. She had managed to tell Ino all about the mission and a little about how she'd gotten so strong and how she'd changed without going into Naruto's secrets. After that incident in the forest, which she had left out of her story, she now felt that it was very important to keep Naruto's secrets.

"Wow, that's just… that's… I dunno Sakura. I'm still shocked that you killed someone. How are you not freaking out about that?" asked a _very_ shell-shocked Ino.

"I told you Ino. I talked to Kakashi-sensei, but he just gave me the same crap the academy tells you. I guess it worked for him but it was Naruto who explained it better for me. He said that I should ask myself what the mercenary would have done if he had lived. When I told him that he would have probably gone out and killed or stolen from someone else Naruto told me to think about that someone else as _my_ family or someone who was precious to _me_ not just someone I didn't know. Then he asked if it would be worth it for that merc to die then and I said it would and he told me that that was the way I should look at it from now on."

"That's pretty deep coming from the dobe."

"Don't call him that! He's not an idiot, Ino-pig."

"Sorry, it's just that's what everyone has always thought. I'd still think so if you hadn't told me this. But I'm glad you told me. I want to be friends again too but Sasuke's still gonna be mine!" said Ino trying to add some humor to a conversation that had been serious far to long for her tastes. Really, talking about death and killing and potentially psycho teammates was important but she wanted to get off those topics for now.

"You can have him, piglet. After seeing him on this mission I don't want him anymore. Anyway it's late and I've got to catch Naruto before I can go to sleep so I'll see you later. Remember, _nobody_ is to know anything about this conversation. When we're not alone it's like this _never_ happened okay?"

"Yeah, yeah I get it forehead."

The girls got up off the bed they had been laying on to have their conversation and went downstairs. Ino said a distracted goodbye after leaving towards her home and Sakura turned to head to Naruto's house. Soon as she was able to Sakura jumped up to the roof of a shop and started to go the quick way to Naruto's apartment.

As she roof-jumped towards Naruto's house in the poor part of Konoha Sakura spotted Hinata walking with Haku back to the Hyuuga compound. Sakura frowned a little at that but didn't stop to greet them as she leapt from roof to roof to get to Naruto's house.

-- break --

When Naruto arrived at his apartment he had a surprise in the form of his pink-haired teammate standing in front of his door.

"Good evening Sakura-chan! What brings you here? I thought you would have wanted to rest after our long day of running."

"I actually wanted to talk to you a little about some of the stuff that happened during the mission. If that's okay of course!" she amended quickly.

"Yeah that's fine. Let me get the door and we can talk inside with some privacy." Naruto turned to open his door. Once he got it opened he showed some of what little ninja etiquette he knew by stepping though first while keeping his hands in sight at all times. Sakura followed him inside not commenting about or needing his gesture proclaiming it was safe to enter his apartment. She went and sat on his couch and sat there looking at him putting away his things after he'd locked the door. Naruto finished and turned to look at her before speaking. "So what's been bothering you about the last mission?"

"Well actually lots of things but I'm not sure what we should talk about first."

"Perhaps we should go back to what we used to do when we first began asking serious questions. You ask a question and I tell you what the answer will cost you."

"That's actually probably for the best then. But only as long as you keep your prices to questions where you feel you can."

"I will only promise that the price will be fair." Sakura sighed at this statement. She had always been willing to pay Naruto's favors and answer his questions because in the end his answers were worth it but there was always the nagging feeling that there would come a question that she would ask that she couldn't pay enough for.

"Fine, the first question is: what are the extent of your physical changes and why cover them up if they make you more effective?"

"That's a little difficult to explain without revealing more so why don't you ask all your questions at once so I know what to tell you." Sakura frowned a little at this. She knew that Naruto wouldn't lie to her but that didn't mean that he told the truth outright. Usually when they skirted around a topic he didn't much like he would answer the question directly and literally but not say anything more about it or elaborate on his answers. She didn't like playing verbal gymnastics with him where she tried to twist and bend her questions around to get a real answer that satisfied the nature rather than the letter of her curiosity.

"Well the ones I was thinking of were: why aren't you liked very much in Konoha? Why was Hinata leading Haku to her clan house? Where is all this new aggression coming from? Why weren't you bothered by killing those mercenaries? Who is helping you get so much better? Can I tell Ino anything about our practices and sparring together?" asked Sakura in a rushed stream sounding almost like a forceful sigh.

"Those are some pretty costly questions…" stated Naruto slowly as he pondered what would be worth the information. Each one of the questions would either be skirting something he couldn't tell her about or directly walked on secrets that could change her whole opinion of him. "I would say that you can tell Ino some of what happens when we're together. Like the fact that we spar with each other or that we help each other with jutsu after team missions or you would be okay hinting that I'm better than I look like I am. I would caution you though, because I hold secrets sacred. If you tell Ino too much there could be consequences for both of you. You are my friend Sakura-chan and a very close one at that. You know more about me than most people will ever know but if you break that trust you are basically telling me that you don't think I'm worth being a friend to and that I'm worthless at best or your enemy at worst. To me breaking someone's trust is a mortal sin and there isn't much that is off limits in regards to punishing someone who proves themselves less than trustworthy."

Sakura nodded. She understood what Naruto wasn't saying which amounted to 'if you break my trust I will hunt you and whoever you told down to the gates of hell themselves' and she thought that meshed with his personality well. She still wanted to know the answer to the rest of those questions though. She moved closer to Naruto hoping that he might hurry up and decide on a price.

"Your question about Hinata and Haku I can answer for cheap. You have to tell me your honest reason for your crush on Sasuke."

"That's easy; there was no real reason beyond him being attractive. But I don't like him like that anymore. Too many things changed during our mission and I think I saw what you were talking about with his arrogance and entitlement issues."

Naruto nodded before he spoke. "I can't provide a good home for Haku nor can I spend enough time and effort changing her outlook on her life so I had to find another place for her to live. I trust only two people more than I trust Hinata-chan and with her genuinely kind nature and abundant resources she was the logical choice." Sakura seemed a little skeptical about that. "I know about her crush on me she told me herself. I'm not allowed to say more about it, I'm bound by secrets and promises you are not privy to."

"Your question about who I'm getting my training from is another comparably cheap question. You must tell me your best jutsu or technique, how you got it, and how far you have mastered it."

"It's close because one is a powerful jutsu if used right but has limited application. The other is lower level but has many more applications." She looked at Naruto for him to decide.

"The first then," he said.

"Doku Gasu it creates poison gas that you breathe out of your mouth. I found it in an old medical scroll I got secondhand; it was written in the back where they leave blank space for notes. I know the handseals, chakra molding, process, when, and where to use it but I've been afraid of performing it without someone on hand to fix me if something goes wrong."

"If the poison type is changeable then why don't you try a minor poison until you think you've mastered it?" asked Naruto.

"I think I'll try that next but I'd still like someone who could revive me at least nearby if not watching."

"We can probably arrange that if we choose a field near where some of the medic-nin go to practice. The person that I'm training with is actually a summoned creature. He's this really old ape that goes by 'Sensei' so I don't know his real name. I got the ape contract from the Sandaime when I told him that Kakashi was neglecting my training. I wouldn't say I'm anywhere close to mastering Kuchiyose because I've only managed to summon three different apes and never in combat but I'm still working on proving I'm a worthy contract holder."

Sakura was shocked. Summoning at such a young age? That was almost unheard of. The vast majority of ninja went their whole careers without ever getting a contract; many didn't even see a contract in their career. If she remembered correctly the Sandaime himself still used the taijutsu style the ape clan had taught him despite knowing dozens of other styles which meant that Naruto was learning the same taijutsu that a famous Hokage used. She took a moment to sit back and savor that. Now she would really have to step up her taijutsu training if she ever wanted to _touch_ Naruto, never mind actually harm him.

"The rest of your questions are all interconnected and require a much higher payment. Let's see…" he was thinking aloud and Sakura waited anxiously for his decision. She'd already decided to do whatever he decided. Whenever Naruto's face got that serious it was worth whatever price. "…it's important but I doubt that she has anything quite so big… …maybe… …no, that's not enough… …well that might have a certain symmetry. Yes I think that's what we'll do." Naruto nodded to himself as his decision was made.

Sakura watched as he got up and moved towards his kitchen table where he kept his fuuinjutsu supplies. She wondered what exactly he was doing. He turned to her and looked at her carefully as if reaffirming his decision.

"This is my price: you have to reveal what is most intimate to you and you have to be sealed to silence about what I tell you." Sakura wondered what he could mean by what was most intimate to her and her eyebrows rose. "If you don't want to then I'm afraid you will have to live with your curiosity until you do agree to my terms."

"Can you tell me more about what I'm agreeing to?" was the hesitant question from Sakura.

"I can tell you that whatever you hear while inside the seal I draw you won't be able to tell anyone even under interrogation once I've finished it. You will sit inside the array with it partially activated while I explain things to you and when I'm finished explaining I will complete the seal which will forcibly repress your memories of this conversation. You will be able to remember it but if you try to tell someone or if someone goes prying for the information you will forget it temporarily. I learned the seal from an ex-ANBU captain. He used to use it on people he and his team had to reveal their identities to."

Sakura thought about that for awhile. Actually she thought this could be very good because it eliminated the risk of telling someone she shouldn't. She nodded eagerly in acceptance.

"I'll do it. What do you need me to do and what am I supposed to tell you?" she asked.

"You don't need to do anything yet and you won't be so much telling me as showing me." As Sakura pondered this cryptic wording Naruto cleared the floor in his living room. She watched as he laid down several long and wide strips of paper side by side to form a two meter by two meter square. He then took out a paintbrush and a large bottle of ink that was marked 'special'.

He began drawing a large circle that spanned the entire breadth of the paper drawn entirely out of kanji and other special characters she couldn't recognize. With that circle finished he started on a square whose corners just barely touched the inside of the circle he had completed. With the square drying he started another circle whose diameter was the same as the side of the square and again the outer edges of this new shape just touched the innermost edges of the old. Inside that circle he drew a pentagram and left the inside blank before he began drawing more circles and triangles that were much smaller but were now centered on the connections between the larger shapes.

Before her very eyes Sakura witnessed Naruto draw the most complex seal she'd ever seen or even heard about. In the really in-depth medical procedures there was often a fairly complex seal drawn to keep the patient from dying during the operation but even those complex patterns had nothing on this despite their tendency to fill an entire room.

Naruto finished up the seal by connecting the last small circle that was inked around the topmost point of the inner pentagon to a smaller chain of symbols and kanji that swung a wide spiral anticlockwise around the inside of the pentagon forming a full five turns before stopping precisely in the center. Once he'd marked the last kanji, 'seal' she noted, he stood and seemed to wait for it to finish drying. Once he was sure that it was done he turned to Sakura for the last portion.

"This will hurt quite a bit I'm told. There is still time to back out." When she shook her head no he continued. "Well then, as soon as you strip off all your clothes we can begin." The seriousness of this statement was slightly marred by his lecherous grin.

"WHAT?!" screamed Sakura.

"Before you try to deck me you agreed to reveal what is most intimate to you and I imagine that it doesn't get much more intimate for you than standing around in the nude. That was part of the price, do you want to know or not?"

Sakura grumbled and stood. She had a sudden attack of nerves that her anger and irritation couldn't hope to suppress when Naruto took a seat on the couch she had just vacated and looked at her intently.

--

Naruto took pity on the pink-haired girl when he saw she was nearly terrified. He decided to try something that he'd been eager to repeat since that day in the woods. He was truly glad that he'd kept the chakra concealing seals from when he'd helped Sakura with her ijutsu.

He reached up and slowly drug the top of his mask down until it pooled around his neck while he released his mental reign on the chakra his suppression seal allowed him and allowed it to suffuse the room. He noticed Sakura's eyes roll back and her eyelids flutter half closed as he saturated his chakra with his lust and eagerness to see her naked before him.

--

Sakura was terrified at the thought of being naked in front of a boy. She'd been having 'those' sorts of thoughts for a while now and she was sure that this was some sort of taboo. She wasn't actually sure what scared her about it though. She thought she might be scared that Naruto would do something to take advantage of her but she discarded that. She thought that she might be scared because nobody had seen her naked since Ino and her had compared the effects of puberty at their last slumber party. But she thought that the scariest thing she could imagine was Naruto thinking she wasn't pretty or sexy. This thought scared her even more. Why should she care what Naruto thought about her body?

She was working herself up into a fine fit but further introspection was ceased by a new feeling. It was actually a little like getting doused with a bucket of ice water. Well it was in the sense that both experiences were drastic and had an immediate effect but that was about where the similarities ended.

This feeling was warm and incredibly pleasant. But it was also very insistent. She had to do something and it needed to happen right away if she could just remember what it was. She tried to concentrate but she felt that slipping away too. Suddenly she was thinking clearly again, of sorts. The restraint that she always kept her chakra under had come undone without her concentration and she was bleeding her pink-tinged chakra into the light-blue chakra Naruto was suffusing the air with. With this buffer she realized that the feeling she was experiencing was being brought on by Naruto. Instead of getting mad that he was influencing her she accepted those feelings. She embraced what he was sending her and soon her mind told her what needed to happen and inner-Sakura decided to be the most helpful she'd been since the special kunoichi only lessons and instruct her on how it needed to be done.

She smiled a sultry smirk at Naruto and slowly turned around holding his gaze by looking back over her shoulder.

--

_Oh wow, I may have overdone that. She seems like she's handling it better now though. What's she doing? Oh Kami-sama, is she actually going to do what I think she is?_ Naruto practically barred his newly bestial teeth in a lecherous grin that had the muscle control been possible would have stretched ear to ear.

He watched Sakura turn her back to him and look at him over her shoulder. Her own chakra flared and he could feel its affects on his own libido. _She's radiating lust too! That's certainly a far cry from the acceptable isn't it?_ Naruto settled back to enjoy the show. Her hair flared out in a gentle wind caused by her chakra and her hitai-ite which was holding it back slipped out and hit the floor with a metallic clank.

He watched her hands as they gripped her shoulders and slowly stroked down her sides smoothing out the fabric covering her until they got to the slits in her red dress. She bent over gracefully showing her ass prominently as she pulled off the sandals she'd forgotten to remove when she'd come in. She turned towards him as she stood straight again and her hands caressed herself on their way up to the zipper on her collar. She slowly unzipped her dress, lingering almost coyly between her breasts and averting her eyes from Naruto's to add to the image of innocence. She slowly dragged the zipper down to her left hip where it met the high slit on her thigh. She turned away again before she slid the garment slowly off her shoulders and finally dropping it to pool around her ankles in a soft shushing sound.

Naruto was surprised to find that she didn't wear a bra under her dress but appreciated the glorious expanse of bare back all the same. She locked eyes with him as she turned around to reveal her braless breasts. The heat in the room spiked up again as Naruto took in their pale form with the small rosy pink nipples looking painfully hard. Her hands came back up to cup them slightly before they trailed down her flat toned stomach to hook her thumbs into her tight black shorts.

--

Sakura bit her lower lip as she began inching her last item of clothing down her legs. Her kunai holster fell with a thud and a clatter as the knives spilled out over the floor beside her. She bent forward sliding her shorts down her legs and allowing her hair to come forward over her shoulders to lightly cover her breasts.

She stared into Naruto's eyes as she rose back up standing straight and baring herself for his scrutiny. He seemed to approve as his eyes swept over her lingering on her bald pussy that was already leaking some of her juices to indicate her arousal in response to his lust. She stood still barely succeeding in not covering herself with her hands as Naruto looked at her.

Finally he opened his arms in a clear invitation to join him and she practically flew across the short distance into them where she snuggled into his lap. She was far too gone to care about the implications or meaning in this type of position, she just wanted acceptance and comfort and she only saw a place that offered both.

--

Naruto liked what he saw. He spent what must have been five full minutes just appreciating the view. Eventually he'd seen enough and opened his arms inviting Sakura to hug him. He was very surprised at the speed with which she took his offer and almost before he knew it she was sitting firmly in his lap with her arms wrapped around his ribs and her legs straddling his own as she pressed herself close to him.

He felt her burry her head in his shoulder before turning to breathe deep his scent from the crook of his neck. He felt some moisture on his neck soon and he realized with a start that she was crying. He wrapped his arms for firmly around her and questioned her.

"What's wrong Sakura-chan? Why are you crying?" he was now thoroughly worried. He thought it was a fair trade but he hadn't counted on a reaction like this.

"I'm just happy Naruto-kun. I know I'm not the prettiest girl around but when you look at me I feel so beautiful anyway. So I'm happy and I want to thank you for that." She explained as she nuzzled his neck with her nose trying to get beneath the irritating fabric.

With her breath on his neck distracting him, Naruto absently dropped his partial henge. Sakura felt the change immediately and changed her position to take his ear into her mouth and gently nibble at it with her lips. Naruto groaned and ran his lengthened and sharpened nails down her spine. Sakura moaned directly into his ear and pressed herself firmly against him even as she began grinding her hips down into Naruto's lap.

Naruto's head darted down and captured her neck in his teeth. Sakura leaned back slightly and barred her neck more in a display that screamed to Naruto's instincts that she was a willing and submissive female and that he should mate her right away. Naruto growled possessively before he jerked his head away and turned to look away from Sakura.

"No, not like this, not drunk on each other's chakra," Naruto gasped out. Sakura turned to face him and reached out to cup his cheeks in her hands. She slowly but firmly turned his head back to her and when he was facing her she kissed him hard.

It was clumsy, she had never been kissed before, but it made a connection deeper by far than a normal kiss might. Their lips mashed against each others and soon Naruto's tongue found its way into Sakura's mouth. She instantly began sucking lightly on it while running her own tongue over his. When he managed to coax her tongue into his own mouth something unexpected happened. There was a chakra surge and the two hormone-driven ninja were mixing chakra via mouth with Sakura absorbing some of Naruto's and Naruto absorbing some of Sakura's.

They remained lip locked and transferring chakra for ten minutes before they stopped and reluctantly pulled away. Sakura still had her hands fisted in Naruto's hair and she idly wondered why none of the bells had fallen out. Naruto moved back to Sakura's neck and she tilted her head to allow him better access once more as he grazed her flesh with the tips of his incisors.

--

Sakura sighed contentedly. That kiss had told her much of what she wanted to know about her feelings towards her blonde teammate. Her crush had shifted teammates and deepened considerably. Naruto had stopped them from going further but she knew that if they hadn't stopped she would have no regrets were she to wake up next to him in the same mode of dress she was in now. This was where she belonged, in the lap of her mate with him claiming her as his.

She smiled slightly at the now familiar problem that was currently soaking Naruto's pants and making the insides of her thighs sticky. She arched her back slightly to try to tempt Naruto towards her boobs. She almost ached for him to use those deliciously sharp and dangerous teeth of his to mark them as his property as was proper.

The teething on her neck was slacking off and she resigned herself to waiting until after he had explained whatever he needed to before she would try again to get him to mate her. She was slightly surprised at the directions her thoughts were taking with the whole mate issue but she tossed the confusion aside quickly in favor of how these new thoughts and instincts made her much happier than she had been before.

--

Naruto succeeded in calming himself down and now had to explain to Sakura about the Kyuubi, if that wasn't a buzz-kill he didn't know what was.

"It's time for you to sit in the seal array Sakura-chan." She responded reluctantly by slowly getting up while making sure he had an uninterrupted view of her crotch and the evidence of what he did to her. Such was the repugnant nature of the upcoming conversation that he couldn't even manage a self-satisfied smirk. This was what truly clued Sakura in to the seriousness of the upcoming explanation.

"Okay, kneel in the center like you would for a tea ceremony. I'm going to start channeling chakra to the seal. Everything you hear will sound kind of funny for awhile but that's normal and it means the seal is working. When we're finished the seal is going to crawl across your body and condense down to about two centimeters in diameter before it fades away. That's the part that's going to hurt. I'm sorry but I can't do anything about the pain."

--

Sakura moved into the circle and knelt down unashamed of her nudity not covering herself beyond how her legs covered her in this position naturally. She even went so far as to brush her hair back with her hands so it was no longer covering her breasts. She sat straight-backed and proud even as Naruto paused in his preparations to look at her again. She even smiled slightly at the attention.

_This isn't so bad at all. It's kinda exciting to have him staring at me like that. __**Whew, kinky girl, good for you. We should be proud of our body!**__ Ya, and as long as Naruto-kun likes it then we have nothing to be ashamed of._ Sakura nodded at those thoughts and when she felt chakra molding she refocused her attention on Naruto. She soon felt the sensation Naruto described. It was kind of like hearing things through a thin wall or as if the speaker was far away. Everything was kind of muffled but not like whispering and her ears weren't ringing like something loud had temporarily partially deafened her.

She heard Naruto asking her questions trying to figure out if she could hear him. Sakura waited until her ears cleared enough for it to sound just a little softer than Naruto's voice was normally before she responded.

"I can hear you just fine Naruto-kun."

"Okay then, I suppose I should start with what you already know. What do you know of the Kyuubi attack?" he asked. Sakura was a little confused. _Why is he asking about that? That has nothing to do with this. We weren't even alive at that point and if he was he would have been a baby._

"That it attacked Konoha thirteen years ago and the Yondaime killed it, but what does that have to do with anything?"

"That's not entirely correct. The Kyuubi did attack thirteen years ago but the Yondaime didn't kill it. You can't kill something that's truly immortal so his only option was to put it someplace it wouldn't cause harm." Sakura's eyes widened at that. _The Kyuubi is still out there somewhere?_ She hoped that wherever it was it couldn't get out. "His idea was to seal the beast into something but with something that powerful you need to seal it in a living creature. The problem was what to use. Nothing besides a human would be able to fully contain the beast but an adult would have their chakra coils ripped apart before the seal took hold and the entire effort would be in vain. The solution was to use a newborn baby to seal the bijuu into… I was that baby, Sakura-chan.

"That's the reason that everyone hates me around here. I remind all the people who saw the Kyuubi's attack of the night they were helpless and they thought they were all going to die. I represent over one hundred dead ninja to them. People don't see me they just see what I hold and they try to get their petty revenge. It's kinda funny really because if I really were a demon they wouldn't dare attack me like they do but if I'm not then their revenge serves no purpose.

"The Hokage made a law that no one could speak the truth about the Kyuubi to anyone who didn't already know about it. You and the two classes above you along with everyone not old enough to remember the fox doesn't know what I hold. It's an S-class village secret; to speak of it is treason. Your thoughts about me might change but remember I'm the container not the demon."

Sakura took all this new information in and found she didn't care about that. Her feelings for Naruto were unchanged.

"That answers one of my questions but how does that relate to the rest?" she asked trying to coax the downcast blonde back on topic.

"The changes you've seen were caused when your ijutsu backfired up my arms when you crossed over my hands. The changes started from there and I know that the Kyuubi's chakra, if not the Kyuubi itself, interacted with the chakra you released back into the hand over your hara. I have the feeling that more drastic changes were counteracted by the discharge from the hand over your herutsu which seemed to stay normal if a little darker in color and blue-shifted. I'm not sure of all the changes beyond the obvious visual ones so if you could do a diagnostic jutsu on me later that would probably help when I have to explain them to Hokage-sama next week sometime. I'm going to need to know if you're okay with telling the Hokage about your self-ijutsu or if I'm going to need to dance around the truth about that, by the way. But we can talk about that later. That should answer about the extent of the changes as much as I understand them.

"I have to hide them because they connect me further to the Kyuubi and I really don't need any extra animosity from the villagers. Yes they do make me a more effective shinobi and I'm getting help working on a seal that will mimic Tsunade's youth genjutsu that I'll be able to hide with and still use them. With any luck I can claim that it's a jutsu or bloodlimit skill when I do drop the genjutsu to use the claws and such.

"I've always had a problem with my aggression and now that I know about the bijuu I can link it back to the Kyuubi. I had an easy time killing because it's part of my more insistent than average predator instincts. Don't mistake that for me not having a problem killing. Sure it was easy at the time while I was still high on my bloodlust but afterwards I felt the same regret as you did. I've lived a much less sheltered life than you so I probably had an easier time rationalizing the guilt because I've seen the worst parts of people. It's actually my aggression and eagerness to fight that got me into the shinobi academy. Ojiisan noticed I was always starting fights and he decided that since I was going to fight anyway he might as well give it a purpose. The first couple years of academy I could beat anyone in straight taijutsu because I hit harder and could soak up more damage than everyone else. It was only when the teachers started to teach me wrong on purpose that I became a dobe. The only teacher who taught me anything correctly was Iruka-sensei but by then I was much too jaded to pick anything up."

Sakura was horrified. Her ijutsu was going to cause Naruto problems and possibly physical harm. She needed to find out what all had happened and what parts of it could be fixable. But maybe Naruto didn't want to be fixed, in which case she didn't know how to help him but she knew that she had to. She was also appalled with her academy senseis. How could they deliberately hinder someone that they knew was going to be relying on their teachings to stay alive?! As she thought about it though it began to make more sense, even Kakashi had been passively punishing Naruto for the Kyuubi. Well she was not going to stand for it anymore.

"Well just because you have something evil sealed inside you is a stupid reason for anyone to hate you!" declared Sakura eliciting a shocked glance from Naruto. "Now can you please finish this seal so I can check you out?" she asked. This elicited a very strange grin that she was coming to know intimately and she immediately though back over her question. _Oh damn, I didn't mean it like that you pervert. __**Didn't you?**__ Well… not at first anyway._

She saw Naruto lift his hands off the seal and form two more handseals before slamming his hands back down on the paper. The ink of the seal shone brightly and suddenly began moving. Sakura watched as the spiral she was kneeling on unraveled and slid over the paper to her left ankle.

Sakura screamed.

_Oh Kami, it burns! It's like fire!_

--

Naruto watched with a sympathetic wince as the line of kanji crept up her leg. He knew intimately what that felt like. He had been trapped in one while an old and mutilated shinobi offered him a position in his own personal ANBU as a weapon. He had been told to make a decision before he passed the genin exams but a year later after another failure Iruka had taught him this very seal as a way to keep his secrets. When he recognized it and told Iruka about it they had gone to see an interrogation expert named Morino Ibiki and the large and heavily scarred man had broken it before taking a transcript of Naruto's experience to the Hokage. He didn't know what had happened after but he hadn't been approached by the cripple again.

He watched as the symbols, kanji and shapes slide slowly up Sakura's nude form like the caresses of a sadistic lover. It looked almost erotic having such a large seal array sliding across a pretty girl's naked body but the effect was ruined by the screams of pure agony that ripped themselves clawing out of her throat. Naruto wouldn't wish this pain on anyone and he never used this seal lightly. He had used it only once before on Hinata when he told her about the Kyuubi and this time didn't look any better, though he hoped he wouldn't vomit this time.

The seals crawled further up Sakura's body until the entire array was covering her whole head, unseen beneath her hair. The seal began spinning as pieces unlocked and shifted separate from the overall movement. The entire thing was a rather intricate puzzle box and it was now closing to hold tight the memories contained within it. Soon the seal had shrunk to the size of a thumbnail and rested on the center of Sakura's forehead. The seal burned a bright red before fading to black and finally fading from her skin altogether. It was still there and active but it wouldn't be much of an information repressing seal if it advertised to the world that something was being repressed or hidden.

--

Sakura allowed herself to go totally limp and fall to the side in an ungraceful slump. The pain was gone but she could still feel the phantom memories of it and her muscles twitched weakly in response. She looked up at Naruto and saw his regret in his gorgeous sapphire eyes. She allowed herself to fall deeply into those eyes because anywhere was better than her own body at the moment. She saw deeper and felt more of his emotions until she finally found one that made her feel fantastic, pain and all. She felt his pride in her. He was proud of her for taking that pain willingly for him.

She practically glowed at knowing Naruto was proud of her. She felt herself lifted and taken out of the kitchen/living room and taken into the bedroom where he gently laid her down on the bed. Weakly she managed to grab at Naruto and pull him into the bed with her and she smiled when he stretched out beside her. She snuggled into his chest totally unconcerned by her nakedness as she tried to get as close to him as possible.

"You can't fall asleep here Sakura-chan. You have to go home or your parents will worry. If your mother does indeed work for the council she will hear of your return and it will raise questions about you not being home the night after a mission."

Sakura groaned a little but accepted the truth of the statement. "What time is it?" her voice was hoarse as she asked from all her screaming.

"8:30pm time for you to go home."

"Alright, will you help me find my clothes?"

"Of course"

"We need to meet after practice tomorrow or sometime during the day if we don't have a team meeting. I need to see what I did to you and if I can fix it."

"You will not dare! I like how I look, thank you very much."

"Still I'd like to know what my mistake did to you."

"You're welcome to find out but I don't want you to agonize about what you did to me. I like it and barring any serious long-term health problems I'll even thank you for it."

Sakura smiled and snuggled further into Naruto before deciding that talking about his changes wasn't all they were going to do tomorrow. She reluctantly pulled herself up off of her teammate and went out to search for her clothes. Naruto, predictably, wasn't much help and spent more time looking at her bending over repeatedly than actually gathering her clothes.

She left his apartment soon after and walked slowly home hoping that the disheveled state she was in from the pain and the intense kissing earlier would fade enough to be unnoticeable before she made it to her door.


	10. Chapter 9

The day after Naruto explained about the Kyuubi to Sakura it seemed that her luck had taken a turn for the worse. Nothing truly bad was happening to her but all her plans involving Naruto were being repeatedly shot down. She had made it home okay the night before and had immediately after been sat down by her mother and father and basically interrogated about her mission.

She wasn't actually surprised when she found out that her parents expected her to quit after her first serious mission. Well more correctly she would have been surprised if she hadn't already known that killing was a core principle of being a ninja. Her parents had apparently assumed that after seeing her first death close up or watching her teammates or sensei kill someone she would decide that being a kunoichi wasn't all that glamorous and she would quit.

Unfortunately for them she already knew, after many harsh lessons from Naruto, being a kunoichi wasn't glamorous or easy or flashy like the minor fire jutsu the villagers saw demonstrated during festivals like pretty fireworks. So when she informed them that she had already taken a life and she couldn't imagine going back to being a naïve villager anymore, her parents were somewhat shaken. Her tousan had always been more understanding and more willing to let his daughter make her own choices and this time was no different. After asking seriously if she were okay with her profession of choice and getting assurance that she was, he backed off and reminded her that even though he wasn't a shinobi he was her father and she could come to him with any problems she had or if she needed to talk.

Her kaasan on the other hand was nearly impossible. Although there had been talk among the Haruno clan about possibly putting some of the children into the ninja program to better their rapport with the ninja populous, the future Haruno matriarch wasn't thrilled that her daughter was the first. This difference of opinion between mother and daughter spawned an argument that turned into a screaming match her tousan had abandoned them to after an hour and continued after he left for another hour. The end result of the shouting match was that Sakura overslept and was late getting to her team's meeting place.

Once she arrived at the bridge she was surprised that nobody was there. After about five minutes of waiting she began looking around and eventually found a note from Kakashi-sensei pinned to the bottom of the bridge railing with a senbon. The note informed her that there would be no team activities or mission today due to the complexity of the report he and, by extension, they would have to write. With the reminder to write her report she needed to find someone who knew how and could teach her. Obviously Kakashi wasn't going to be any help.

Her search took up another hour and a half before she found Hinata and Haku wondering around the village apparently familiarizing Haku with her new home. Sakura stopped to ask Hinata how to write a mission report because she remembered that Team 8 had already completed a short C-rank patrol mission as training for their most probable future deployment. So she knew that Hinata would know how to write a mission report. She had been quickly roped into showing Haku around with Hinata and finally after three hours of that she was invited back to Kurenai-sensei's apartment where they would work on her mission report together with Kurenai.

This was basically how Sakura spent most of her day.

-- break --

Naruto's day was less hectic.

After Kakashi showed up only five minutes late and told them that they had the day off but they needed to write up mission reports before they got paid, Naruto made a beeline for the house of a certain former ANBU captain. If anyone knew the correct way to do it and all the little helpful shortcuts and ninja slang that would make writing go faster it would be him.

So here Naruto was on the doorstep of Iruka's apartment. Judging by the sounds coming from inside the apartment he was still making the most of the academy vacation and he seemed to using his girlfriend Anko to do so.

Naruto bet that he was one of maybe five people that knew Iruka had once been one of the most feared ANBU captains in recent times. With the much more visible and infamous Kakashi and Itachi respectively, Iruka was mostly pushed under the mat. But that suited him well. He didn't want to be known as the Mizujian that had cut his way through dozens of Kumo-nin in the conflict that preceded the botched peace agreement that now stood as a shaky no hostilities pact between the two nations. He had hung up his armor on the day that Konoha had sent the head of Hyuuga Hiashi's twin brother back to Kumo to appease the same people he had been fighting for six straight years after the Kyuubi attack. Iruka had told the Hokage as formally as possible that he wanted no part in a military that would kill their own people to fix their enemy's transgressions.

Naruto had found out when he had broken the seal that Iruka had placed on the bottom drawer of his bedside dresser and had seen the chakra sword that Iruka had wielded contained within. It was soon after this that Iruka and Naruto had become the closest of friends/brothers/father-son/whatever. It had been Naruto that helped Iruka let go of his anger at the Hokage and get him to take up his sword again if not rejoin ANBU or take the rank of jonin. Ironically it had been Iruka practicing his sword forms unmasked in an obscure training field that had gotten him Mitarashi Anko as a girlfriend so that bit of good luck could probably be accredited to Naruto as well.

Which brought Naruto back to his current conundrum. If he wanted to get paid he needed to talk to Iruka, or Anko, it didn't matter to him but he had come for Iruka. On the other hand, it was quite clear to him that they were having some fairly vigorous sex in there at the moment. Now Naruto knew that he would never want to be interrupted while having sex but at the same time the man he was thinking about interrupting was a schoolteacher and it was coming up on 10am so really any of his students could potentially be mentally scarred by this. Given: Naruto doubted that any of Iruka's current students (barring another Inuzuka) would have good enough hearing to notice but it was the principle of the situation that mattered here.

Of course there was always another option. Naruto's face morphed into something that could possibly pass for the face of a devious fox as he grinned evilly. He knew that both of the shinobi in there would detect him long before he was able to surprise them totally so the idea here was to get in there fast enough to catch them in a very compromising situation. If he timed it right his victims… err, friends… might be distracted enough by their state that they wouldn't notice him until too late.

He quickly picked the lock on the door and slipped in silently, making sure to keep his bells silent too. He eased the door closed behind him and was gratified that the noises emanating from the bedroom continued. Naruto quickly and silently moved though the house and finally stood in front of the open bedroom door. As he watched his most trusted friend screwing another of his friends, Naruto wondered at his mental state… if he could watch this calmly without freaking out or being disgusted, what did that say about him?

"Well you two look like you're having fun." Naruto deadpanned. He received three kunai in answer and even as they flew at him he wondered where Anko had pulled hers from. Iruka took the one he threw off the top of the headboard so Naruto knew where that one came from.

A week ago Naruto would have dodged and based on the placement he would have gone left and had his cheek sliced shallowly by Iruka's kunai (Anko was a bad influence on Iruka Naruto was convinced). Today after having invented a working, if not mastered, version of tetsusukin Naruto didn't even move.

The sex stopped immediately as Iruka's kunai flew past Naruto and out into the hall while the two thrown by Anko struck Naruto square in the chest and right shoulder.

The sound the two kunai made when they bounced off him and hit the floor was deafening in the newly silent room.

"When you're finished I need your help writing a mission report Iruka-sensei," chirped Naruto cheerfully as he savored the shocked looks he was receiving. He abruptly turned on his heel and marched out taking great care to make his geta and bells as loud as possible.

-- break --

Iruka and Anko were out in the kitchen and dressed in record time.

"Holy shit brat, when did you get armor you scared the life outta me!" yelled Anko.

"That wasn't armor Anko-chan. How did you do that Naruto?" asked a suddenly serious Iruka. It was always interesting to Naruto to see the personality change that Iruka went through when faced with something he would have dealt with or would be expected to deal with as an ANBU captain.

"Well that's one of my new techniques, _taichou_."

"I am no longer an ANBU captain so you can drop that right now."

"But you are technically a chunin. Are you telling me that chunin aren't my superiors? Wow, here I thought that genin were the lowest of the low but it turns out you really have to take that whomping big test to be a better grunt." Naruto commented, turning towards Anko.

"Yeah, yeah, you've proved you're a smartass. Now what's this new technique?" asked Iruka with surprisingly ill concealed impatience. Anko nodded in agreement eager to learn something new that she hadn't seen before.

"I'm not sure it would work for either of you but it's a type of chakra shield. I call it tetsusukin and it's basically just highly concentrated chakra just below the skin. I gather a high pressure shell under the first layer of my skin. Because it's under my skin I don't have to concentrate to keep it there, just when I'm adding to it, and when I release the technique it should theoretically return to my coils but I don't know if it actually works that way because I've just been reinforcing it since I came up with the idea. It works great! I've had a thrown kunai shatter against it and I didn't even have a scratch."

"Who the hell were you fighting that can throw a kunai hard enough to shatter it on contact? That sounds like you were baiting Tsunade." Anko commented incredulously.

"That's not far from the truth actually. I'm not sure if I should tell you who they are. It's kind of a secret, not a very good one but most people don't know about it so we'd like to keep it that way." Anko shook her head ruefully.

"Pity, I'd like to meet the person who can do that. Maybe they could teach me, Kami knows Tsunade isn't telling anyone how she does it." Anko sighed.

"I heard that she had an apprentice. Doesn't she know how Tsunade does it?" asked Naruto.

"If she knows Shizune isn't telling anyone either, but I doubt she knows because she's never been reported to use it. If I knew something like that you can bet I'd use it." Iruka commented. "Well thank you for interrupting us and scaring us out of another two or three years of life with that knife trick. You said you needed something?"

"Yeah, I need you to teach me how to write a mission report. Should I be worried that you don't sound as disappointed as I would be if someone interrupted my sex?" asked Naruto slightly nervous now.

"I'd've been more disappointed if that was the first time this morning we've done that, but you can expect payback at some point."

"I really didn't need that image Iruka-sensei."

"Well let's get started on that mission report shall we? Do you have a blank mission form and a pen? Alright, start filling in the boxes and when you get to the description of the mission just tell Anko and me about it and we'll tell you what you need to write down for the pencil ninja to look at."

Anko looked wary at hearing about a C-rank mission in excruciating detail but so far all of Naruto's stories of his adventures had been good so maybe this would be. Naruto spent about five minutes filling out the top part of the form before he set it aside and launched into an explanation of the mission.

-- break --

About two hours later Naruto's form was fully filled out and Anko and Iruka were about to go gut Kakashi. Once Naruto had gotten to the part about training his tetsusukin he'd been forced to reveal the identity of the super-strong ninja as Sakura. While this had gotten some good reactions from the two ninja listening to him he wasn't so happy that he'd revealed a secret. In the end Iruka and Anko agreed that something like that wasn't going to stay a secret long and they felt themselves sufficient enough actors to fake surprise once they found out about it. Or if that wasn't enough they could always use: "ANBU connections" which they explained was just another way of saying: "I'm not telling you how I know so drop it and be satisfied that I know".

Naruto bid them farewell, told them that he had better be the baby's honorary uncle, and raced out of the door before they found a way around not being able to peg him to the nearest solid object with kunai.

Naruto decided that he couldn't go to the Hokage without Sakura or at least a fairly detailed account of what he was allowed to reveal so he thought he might try to up his elemental affinities. He knew what worked for him and now all he had to do was find a way to keep doing it. He decided that immersion worked best. After all that's what everyone else did but they chose to do it in the form of high-level jutsu practiced again and again. The problem with Naruto's way was that it took so much chakra. For someone who got it all back so quickly this wasn't a problem at all but for people who might be able to saturate the element in question for several hours and then have to rest for several days this posed quite the stumbling block.

Naruto thought that since wind came easiest to him he would start there. He needed to make a goal for himself otherwise he could spend the rest of his life attempting to get mastery over wind or he could consider himself a master already. The question now became where to call it good enough to move on to other elements.

He wanted to eventually have enough of a mastery of the four main elements to move on to the combined elements as they would allow for much better use in more specialized applications. The idea was that since nobody expected Mokuton jutsu anymore if you could actually manipulate wood you would have an incredible advantage in the forest. On the other hand Aisu jutsu would be incredibly useful in cold climates like Snow or Kumo and because of its harder nature an ice jutsu would always trump a similar power water jutsu. Of course there would always be downsides. Ice and wood required a nearby source of water, even if it could be underground for wood jutsu, and the more the climate differed from the ideal state of the element you were using the harder the jutsu was going to be to use. For example: ice and wood jutsu would not be good to use in Suna because there was no water and it was hot.

He decided that since Haku had her bloodline to help her with her affinities he would need to do something impressive like the wind blade she had released from her naginata during their fight. He decided that if he could release decent wind blades from knife hand strikes and sweeping kicks and wind bullets from sidekicks and straight punches then he could consider himself a master and move on to water where Haku and Iruka would be able to help eventually with ice and right away with water respectively.

Naruto now had to find a different secluded training ground than his usual bamboo forest. He couldn't use the one he'd summoned Enma in though because he wanted to keep that to himself to go to when he wanted to be alone and he knew Sakura had to find him later today. He wasn't about to let loose a bunch of wind blades in his precious bamboo forest though. He needed a training area with a clearing. Well when in doubt ask someone who might know right? He decided that as a fellow wind user he should ask Asuma-sensei. Now all he had to do was find him.

-- break --

Naruto eventually found the shinobi in question training, if you could call it that, with his team on Training Field 43. He wasn't sure though if playing shogi with Shikamaru while Chouji watched and Ino read a magazine was considered training. Undeterred Naruto walked up to Asuma.

"Um, Asuma-sensei? I was told that you were a wind element shinobi and I was wondering if you knew any good places to practice that around here."

"Yes I know some good places for that." Asuma replied.

"…"

"Could you tell me?"

"Yes"

"…"

"Where are the good places to practice wind jutsu?" growled out Naruto.

"I knew we'd get there eventually. Sometimes it is best to just ask for what you need directly instead of beating around the bush." Asuma stated.

"In that case may I ask an impertinent question?" asked Naruto.

"You may. I may not choose to answer it."

"What exactly are Ino and Chouji learning sitting around here? Shikamaru I can write off as strategy exercise but I'm not really sure what Ino is learning about being a kunoichi in a civilian teen girl magazine." Naruto bit out with more than a little venom. He had nothing against Asuma personally but he hated seeing team members getting preferential treatment.

"Well, I imagine that you are looking for a specific answer to a question like that. I could tell you that Ino is learning to better blend into the civilian populous and Chouji is getting a better grasp on the stratagems that Shikamaru is apt to use in battle but something tells me that you're looking for 'nothing' on both counts." Asuma stated dryly.

"I'm sorry that came out disrespectful but I have a problem on my team with inequality in team training. Circumstances being as they are I can't really do anything about it but it makes me more frustrated in other teams when I see it or think I see it. Perhaps you have a reason for letting them sit around?" asked Naruto a little chided. Surely with someone as intelligent as Asuma running things there was a reason beyond laziness for their break. It was entirely acceptable for Asuma to say 'because I told them to' and not explain himself but Naruto always had trouble keeping his nose out of other people's business.

"The truth is that with their prominent families I am obligated to make sure that they have enough chakra at the end of the day for them to practice their clan techniques. I am probably of the same opinion as you that they should be training but the council and public approval lies with the clans. I don't think they should get too specialized in their families techniques because if they ever come across someone who has fought their fathers before they won't be able to do anything new and they will be defeated. I'm helping Shikamaru develop strategy to minimize that but there is only so much I can do. I am bound much in the same way your training is, unfortunately. I assume you came here to find a place to experiment on your own?"

"Yes, I've found I have an easier time with wind jutsu than any others I've tried and I thought I'd explore that. I've only got one workable jutsu right now but I've been able to mess with it a little to make it more effective and I thought that with a place to practice I could get better at tweaking it."

"It sounds like you have a very high wind affinity if you are able to affect changes in jutsu as a genin." By now all of Team 10 was listening unabashedly without care for even the illusion of common decency or tact.

"I've been told that. I actually discovered a different way to work on my affinity and I was hoping for an out of the way place that people couldn't steal my ideas. I don't have very many jutsu and I don't need the bastard taking what few I have." Asuma nodded at this. While the Uchiha clan was still alive and powerful they had stolen more than a few of their comrades' techniques and had not earned themselves many friends with their weak justifications for it.

"Well this training ground is good but if you're looking to stop even me from peaking I'd head over to Training Field 37." Asuma suggested after a moment's thought.

"No, here's fine. Actually with Ino around I know that Sasuke won't show up. No offence to you Ino but you make a very effective deterrent." Naruto nearly split his ribs suppressing his laugh at the look on Ino's face. He nodded to Asuma, Chouji, and Shikamaru and retreated before Ino could attempt to kill him.

He wandered over to one corner of the field and began suffusing the air with chakra. He soon dropped into his meditative state and began playing around with the air around him. First he tried to get it to move around him in ways he could control. He started by swirling the air clockwise around his body followed by counterclockwise. Then to make it more difficult he tried to put a shell of counterclockwise swirling air inside a shell of clockwise swirling air. This was actually turning out to be much easier than he though it would be. He realized that everything he was doing was still impractical in a fight. The swirling air wasn't going fast enough to deflect kunai or shuriken so it couldn't be used as a defense. There were no blades in the air so it couldn't be used as an offense either.

He came out of the meditation to check the time and was surprised to find that he had wasted several hours already. Apparently getting mastery over the elements was going to take a long time. If this was how long it was taking him to get his natural affinity down he didn't even want to think about how difficult fire would be as his natural elemental weakness.

Belatedly he saw that Ino was still at the training field even though her teammates and sensei had long left. He hoped that she hadn't stayed to make her displeasure at being called a deterrent known. While she couldn't do actual damage to him, it still wasn't a good idea to court trouble. Before he could make good his escape she noticed that he was out of his meditation and she started walking towards him. Naruto knew that if he ran now it would be infinitely worse later and possible at an even more inconvenient place, such as the middle of the market for example. In lack of a better option he just sat there and waited until she was close enough to talk to comfortably.

"Is there something I can help you with Ino-chan?"

"Possibly," she answered. _Well that is maddeningly enlightening._

"That's rather cryptic. Are you going to tell me about it so we can see if I can help?" asked Naruto in turn.

"Well it's about your last mission. I've heard some rumors and I wanted to see if their true. I always like to check my sources before passing them along." Ino was being much more cautious than usual. _Ah, she's heard something and now she wants to use blackmail to confirm it and then get what she wants._

"Well at least you're not spreading lies. But what if someone doesn't want rumors spread?"

"Then they have to convince the person that's spreading them that it wouldn't be a good idea to do so."

Naruto dropped his speed seal and was off the ground and behind Ino faster than she could react. He held a kunai tightly to her throat and pressed himself up behind her.

"Is this convincing Ino-chan?" he purred into her ear. Ino gasped at the feelings and would have whimpered slightly in fear if she hadn't been so worried about the knife at her throat. She'd heard from Sakura that Naruto had killed before and was a much better shinobi than advertised but to be this far outclassed by someone that she used to routinely beat in the academy was humbling. She gathered her wits however and pushed on.

"You can't do what you are threatening. My team and parents know where I am and my team knows who I'm with. If something happens to me now they will know you did it. I don't know why but you aren't liked very much and nobody would have a problem believing that you'd murder me, especially after you've already killed on a mission and seem to have no problems with it." Ino smirked a little when Naruto stiffened. "All I want to keep my silence is to know a little more about what I heard."

"Ask away and we will see if it merits explanation," was Naruto's terse reply.

"I've heard that you henged into a kunai and had Sakura throw you at a missing-nin as part of a strategy but everyone knows that henge is just an illusion and wouldn't actually help in that respect. The evidence says that you have a henge that physically changes you. You might be able to explain it away as a kawarimi with a flying kunai but I doubt very much if you could pull it off on command which you will be asked to do eventually. All I'm asking is that you teach me how to use your version of the henge."

"Not going to happen Ino. What could you possibly use my henge for? Beyond the fact that it would almost surely kill you of chakra exhaustion after a few messed up practice tries, it is a very useful jutsu that only remains so if nobody knows about it. It is something I've created and intend to pass it to any family I have if I have any. You wouldn't go around handing out your clan's techniques if someone told you they knew of a way to stop them just to keep them quiet about the countermeasures. If you tell me why you want the henge I may be able to help you, but I won't be teaching you."

Ino seemed to deflate at this. Most of what she said was a bluff anyway. She knew that having a henge so advanced wouldn't be much good if everyone knew he could do it. She also knew that her duty as a kunoichi would be to bring it to the Hokage first as a potentially powerful spying technique and Sarutobi-sama would certainly order her to silence about it. In any case she was one of the few people that genuinely liked Naruto in a passive sort of way. She thought his pranks were hilarious and he was a breath of fresh air in a profession that was apparently filled with serious and melancholy people when they didn't develop some strange psychosis to deal with the stress.

On the other hand she didn't want Naruto to know about what she intended to do with the henge. She had been practicing her family jutsu much more lately in an effort to take over someone without them remembering what went on during it. Once she had heard about Naruto's henge she had been ecstatic because it meant that she didn't have to go with her old and flawed plan. Her new plan was to learn Naruto's henge and henge herself into Sakura. Then she would choose some random guy and take him over. They would go out to some secluded place where Ino, using the guy's body, would have sex with Sakura's form, being worn by her own body.

Ino had loved Sakura since they had met but knew that Sakura was firmly heterosexual and any attempts of push a relationship would ruin their friendship. That was actually where the Sasuke trouble had started; Ino had wanted to make Sakura jealous and wanted some petty revenge for not being Sakura's choice of romantic partner. With Naruto's henge however she could at least pretend that Sakura was touching her or she was touching Sakura. Eventually she broke down crying, she was despicable.

"I wanted to henge myself into Sakura and then take over someone to use to have sex with her form even if it was on me."

Naruto wasn't sure how one was supposed to react to that and he was totally sure that Ino had not meant to say that at all.

"I've loved her forever but she'll never love me like I love her. This was the next best thing. If I could change into her than I could have her sometimes, pretend that I was her and whoever I was using with Shintenshin no jutsu was me. But I know you won't do that for me. I'm a horrible person!"

"Well Ino you may have gone about it the wrong way but loving Sakura isn't wrong." Naruto had decided to see where this went. It sounded kinky and arousing to him and he was always open to that. "Let's pretend that I henged into Sakura. What would you do and what might you do for the opportunity?"

"I would do anything to be able to fuck Sakura." _Wow, _thought Naruto, _that was very frank. Not very specific but I think I can work with that._

"Well how about a trade then? For everything you do to me while I'm in Sakura's form, I get to do the male equivalent in my original form. You kiss Sakura; I kiss you. You play with Sakura's boobs; I play with yours and so on."

"Yes! Yes! I'll do that." Ino screamed.

"Well why don't we go somewhere more appropriate."

-- break --

They arrived at Naruto's apartment about five minutes later. What Ino didn't know was that Naruto was all about stirring up people using their reactions to each other or exposing their secrets in ways that might be deemed accidental. To that effect he had sent a Kage Bunshin to Sakura to ask her to meet him at his apartment in fifteen minutes.

He knew that he had to do this delicately. Sakura had shown some obvious interest in him last night and he was certainly not going to risk that blowing up in his face because he was fooling around with her lesbian friend by stealing her form. In preparation for softening the blow he had the Kage Bunshin escort Sakura to his apartment in an attempt to steer the conversation towards Ino in the hopes that Sakura would figure out the secret before she arrived there and would only take what she saw at a confirmation of what she had just deduced that Naruto was leading her towards as opposed to her teammate and romantic interest just being horny.

--

Naruto's bunshin found Sakura at Kurenai's house with Hinata and Haku in attendance watching the pink-haired girl struggle through a mission report. It was obvious to Naruto that Sakura was struggling with what to put on the form and what should be kept secret as possible. She was having the difficulties because she wasn't sure who read these and who would later have access to them. She didn't want to outline some of Naruto's abilities only to have someone he didn't want to know about them read all they needed to know in the mission archives. She couldn't even ask Kurenai-sensei about who was allowed to read them for fear that the astute female jonin would pry into the reasons for keeping things secret.

All this combined with the strange tension that seemed to be leaking from the two younger black-haired kunoichi mixed to make her extremely grateful for the interruption Naruto provided.

"Hello all, I just came by to get Sakura-chan. We needed some time to meet after the mission and I had a couple hours free and she said she didn't have anything important going on today so I thought now might be a good time."

"Actually that sounds great Naruto," said Sakura. "Thank you Kurenai-sensei for explaining this I think I can finish at home."

Sakura jumped up and grabbed her things before dragging Naruto out the door too quickly for any of the other three females to object.

Out on the road Naruto finally managed to get himself walking at Sakura's side without her dragging him along.

"I take it you wanted an excuse to leave?"

"I didn't know what to write in the mission report and I couldn't exactly tell Kurenai or Haku now could I? Not that I'm not grateful for the interruption but why do you need me now?" she asked.

"Well your best friend has been having trouble telling you something important and I'm going to help her even in a nonconventional manner."

"In other words you found out something about Ino that you think I should know and now you're going to trick her into revealing it. Sometimes I wonder about how you keep secrets."

"She didn't even mean to tell me I don't think but that's entirely beside the point. I think it could be interesting if you knew and I thought you should be warned."

"So you've got some elaborate plan that will get her to confess something to me that she's been hiding and I probably won't like it."

"I didn't say that. Now we're here so all you have to do is wait outside my window and not resist any jutsu that you might feel."

Sakura looked up the four stories that she had to wall climb up to get to Naruto's window. She shrugged. If her mate felt like she needed to know something about her friend and it would get her into his home sooner who was she to argue. She felt the Kage Bunshin next to her disappear and she knew that it would only be a short time before all this confusion was wiped away.

--

Naruto felt his Kage Bunshin disperse and mentally gave Sakura about five minutes to get to her position. He dropped a scrap of paper on the couch in his living room in preparation for his part in this.

He turned back to Ino whom he had been working on calming down so he could begin to guide her into the emotions that he needed. It sounded so crude and unscrupulous but he was sure that this was for the best, besides it would at least be entertaining.

--

Ino was currently sipping on some tea and gathering the last shreds of her pride and control of the situation. She hadn't meant to spill her most precious secret to Naruto of all people but at the time she could only see the goal and not the devils she had to deal with to get there. It wasn't so bad she thought, Naruto was willing to help her and she would finally get what she wanted in the form of heavy petting with Sakura-chan.

--

Naruto now released a small portion of his chakra bathing the room in a nearly inconsequential aura of lust. This tiny, almost unnoticeable, change of mood in the room would go a long way to making this situation right and not a giant fuck up. He created another Kage Bunshin to go open the bedroom window for Sakura. The trick he was going to try would be difficult enough without his chakra suppression seals attempting to mess up the jutsu outside of his apartment.

Ino seemed to not notice his use of the kinjutsu distracted as she was by her fantasies. Naruto just hoped he would get to see those same fantasies acted out between the two attractive kunoichi. It seemed as though he would have to be the instigator though because Ino didn't seem to be moving at all.

Naruto stood and formed a series of handseals, he didn't need to but there was no point in letting Ino know all of his capabilities with his personal jutsu. In a poof of smoke that was perhaps a little too over-the-top Naruto decided to drop the dramatics and a quick manipulation of the breeze inside the apartment cleared away the vision hindering chakra residue to reveal a perfect copy of Sakura wearing the outfit she was in today.

--

Ino practically drooled at seeing a perfect copy of Sakura that she was allowed to play with standing in front of her. She was already wet just at the thought of finally being able to get Sakura naked and being able to oogle to her heart's content. She quickly moved forward and decided to savor the moment by starting slow.

She sashayed up to the image of Sakura and bent down slightly to capture her lips in a searing kiss. She gripped the long pink hair to get a better hold and quickly slipped her tongue into Sakura's mouth.

Then she felt a surge of chakra but she ignored it in favor of deepening the kiss. She was a little disappointed that Naruto wasn't responding like she thought he would have but she was still in a state of bliss to be kissing her love.

--

Sakura was hiding in the bedroom and trying to figure out what exactly occasioned the use of his aura projecting lust. More importantly really was how that could possibly be innocent with Ino in that room. She peeked out of the door and watched Ino stroll up to Naruto. _Wait, why the hell is he in my form?_

She was utterly shocked when Ino planted a scorching kiss on her image. _Well I guess that's what Naruto found out about Ino and the little lecher thought it might be funny to show me._ Suddenly she felt a chakra surge around her and a sudden jerking feeling later she found that she had replaced the Naruto that had been kissing Ino. She froze. Ino's tongue was in her mouth!

_Actually this isn't so bad. __**Well certainly not as good as our mate but it is pleasant isn't it? **__Agreed, but we really need to tell her we aren't up for grabs. We have a mate. __**Perhaps our mate desires this. If this makes him horny would it not be a good chance to get him to claim us totally?**__ Yes, and this is something he might get off on. He's here on the couch watching. Let's give him a show._

Sakura then leaned into Ino and attacked back with her tongue. This apparently took Ino past her ability to go slow and her hands immediately found Sakura's zipper. Her red dress was quickly shed and Ino's hands soon found joy in Sakura's preference against bras. When Ino's mouth descended down Sakura's neck and down across her chest Sakura directed a sultry look at Naruto who was now sitting on the couch.

Sakura sucked in a moan as Ino's mouth found her nipple but this was wrong. No matter how good her friend's touches were they weren't her mate's and that was unacceptable. Sakura pulled Ino's head up to kiss her once more lingeringly before she lightly pushed her away and went to sit in her mate's lap.

--

Naruto had been initially surprised at Ino's dominance but he resolved to do what he had planned and with only a moment's concentration he had kawarimi'ed with the real Sakura and then immediately moved into the living room to sit on the couch to watch the show.

--

Ino was shocked and very disappointed when Sakura pulled her into a kiss and then pushed her away to sit in Naruto's lap.

"Why are you sitting in your own lap Naruto?" she asked the Sakura in his lap.

"I'm not Naruto in a disguise I'm actually Sakura. Naruto kawarimi'ed with me to switch us when he wanted to show me something he'd found out about you. I didn't know you felt that way Ino. Was the sleepover before this last mission I was on just a fake to look at me naked?" Sakura replied.

Ino was confused. Naruto wouldn't have known about the sleepover and she did feel a surge of chakra indicating a jutsu. She had just revealed her most jealously guarded secret to her best friend and the object of that secret. Ino did the only thing that made sense in this situation. She fell to her knees and broke down crying.

--

Naruto was bewildered. He didn't know why Ino had just slumped to the ground crying. It actually made him feel like a complete ass because he was sure it had something to do with him. He looked to Sakura helplessly, which was a mistake in itself because she was a rather distracting vision without anything on her top.

--

As her mate quickly degenerated to staring at her breasts Sakura took action. She knew what kind of mental punishment Ino was probably putting herself through and as wonderful as her mate was he just didn't understand women. She quickly moved from Naruto's lap and scooped up Ino into her arms before she returned to the couch to sit beside Naruto and lay Ino across their laps.

As she cradled Ino's head against her bare breasts Sakura hoped that this situation would quickly become less awkward so she could get claimed by her mate sometime in the near future. She flared her chakra as high as it would go and infused it with all the lust she had for her mate and stared at him trying to tell him without words what to do.

--

Naruto looked up from Sakura's breasts as she began radiating lust. This confused him a little because there wasn't much that could quell his perverseness but a crying girl was one of those things.

Then it hit him. If he could muster up enough lust to override Ino he would be able to stop her crying and maybe even get Sakura out of the rest of her clothes. His mouth curled up into his perverted grin as he began to swamp his apartment in his chakra imbued with all the lust he was storing up from looking at Sakura's bared boobs.

He felt Ino stiffen against him and watched Sakura's eyes roll back under her eyelids as she moaned against the onslaught. Ino turned her head into Sakura's breasts and began laying kisses on them even as Sakura leaned towards Naruto to capture his mouth in a searing kiss.

Naruto smiled against the pink-haired kunoichi's lips as he allowed even more of his chakra to escape its restraints. He slowly lifted his left hand to cup behind Sakura's neck and bring her in more firmly against him. Sakura's hands in turn came up and began pulling at his clothing quickly working through the shirt but thankfully leaving his mask, and more importantly his restraint seals, bundled around his neck.

Ino soon had enough of being left out of the heavy kissing and sat up on top of Naruto's lap to dive in and begin kissing both of them herself. Naruto felt her push Sakura's face out of the way and soon Ino's tongue replaced Sakura's in his mouth. He felt Sakura lean back and begin doing something to Ino but as occupied as he was he didn't realize what until he felt the blonde's bare breasts against his recently unclothed chest.

He immediately abandoned Ino and grabbed at Sakura. He absently released his partial henge as he buried his head in her cleavage. Her arms came up around him and she buried her hands in his belled hair to hold him to her tender mounds as he sucked and nipped at them.

Ino quickly doffed the rest of her clothes and wrappings while Naruto concentrated on Sakura before she dove back in to relieve Sakura of her shorts, weapons, socks, and sandals. Soon she was just wearing her typical white cotton panties but before Ino got the chance to take those off too Naruto grabbed the hem and ripped them off tearing and cutting through them with his claws. He jerked his head forward and buried his sharp incisors deep into the junction of her neck and left shoulder.

--

Sakura screamed in ecstasy as she felt the extreme pain that came from Naruto's teeth mixed with the surge of his ultra dense chakra invading directly into her chakra system and the intense orgasm brought on by her mate claiming her completely. As her fluids rushed out of her she jerked her hips forward attempting to find her mate's phallus to impale herself on.

She nearly cried in thanks to Ino as the blonde kunoichi pulled off Naruto's pants and lined up his cock for her. She screamed again as she thrust herself down on Naruto's dick straight through her hymen and down till he hilted inside her. She gasped and moaned in contentment and victory at long last having her mate inside her.

Soon enough just having him inside her wasn't enough and she began shifting against him trying to get more of that delicious friction inside of her. He quickly got the hint and he released her neck still bleeding to push her down on her back against the couch and began thrusting into her. She moaned as she was filled repeatedly and whimpered when he would pull back as if to come totally out before slamming back into her.

Her vision was suddenly filled by a soaking pussy surrounded with some light blonde fuzz before it descended to her mouth. Sakura wanted to thank Ino for her help in getting Naruto's cock inside her and she immediately began licking and sucking at the dripping slit over her mouth.

--

Ino gasped and nearly had her own orgasm when she saw Naruto enter her friend and love interest in one violent thrust. She was incredibly horny as she watched Sakura take several seconds to adjust to the new sensation of intrusion before she found herself on her back getting plunged into.

Ino was getting desperate as every moan from Sakura was turning her on more and more and when Naruto moved back enough to slide in she jumped at the chance and quickly straddled Sakura's face. She bit her lip and barely held back her scream when Sakura started licking and sucking at her dripping slit. She focused her eyes where Naruto's dick was pistoning in and out of the same girl that was giving her oral. The heat in her stomach was growing and growing and it exploded into intense pleasure when the girl beneath her found and gave a hard suck on the little pearl of her clit.

She stiffened up and kneeled there tense until the last of the feeling swept through her and then she fell forward over Sakura where she lay resting her head on Sakura's hip and watching transfixed as Naruto fucked Sakura.

--

Naruto watched as Ino leapt onto Sakura and started getting oral from her even as he screwed the pink-haired girl's brains out. He was barely holding on, Sakura's tight, hot, wet depths were threatening to wrench away all control from him but he promised himself that Sakura would go first. Ino soon fell forward along Sakura and just lay on top of her staring at him, her glazed eyes told him she'd already cum and was still recovering.

Soon he felt Sakura getting tighter and tighter before she screamed out once more and her pussy clamped around his penis like a wet velvet vice, convulsing around his length. This robbed him of all semblance of control and with a strained grunt he slammed deep and released his seed deep inside her.

He collapsed back onto the couch and leaned back breathing heavy. He was totally shocked when Sakura sat up and began licking off his dick attempting to clean it. His decreasing erection soon stopped falling under the attack of Sakura's unskilled but eager tongue. His rapidly swelling organ reached full size as he saw Ino enthusiastically sucking out the leaking mixture of fluids from Sakura's slit. In the almost suffocating lust saturating the room Naruto couldn't help himself. Gently he moved Sakura's head off his organ and moved around behind Ino.

--

Sakura saw that her mate was going to claim another as was his right as the alpha-male and she tried to set it up to make it easier for him. She rolled over so Ino could get better access to her cunt and scooted back enticing the blonde female further along the couch to create more room for her mate.

She saw him move behind her and begin stoking her ass before he thrust into her. Sakura held Ino's head still as she screamed the pain of having her virginity taken into Sakura's pussy.

--

Naruto smiled as Sakura maneuvered Ino along the couch to make it easier for him. He took a moment to admire Ino's lightly furred pussy that was absolutely drenched in her juices before he lined up his dick and took her from behind. He heard her muffled scream into Sakura and he leaned forward along her back until he was close to her head before he sank his incisors into the junction of her neck and left shoulder in an imitation of the bite he'd given Sakura.

Again he felt his chakra siphoning into Ino's chakra system as he claimed her as a mate. He released her neck and began gently licking the blood away before he rose up and stole a kiss from Sakura. He could faintly taste Ino's juices in her mouth and it aroused him even further. He slipped back and gripped Ino's hips before he thrust forward again.

--

Ino was in a daze now. She'd had her virginity taken from her and then she'd been bitten so she really didn't know why it felt so right. Now though she had a face full of Sakura and she wasn't about to waste this opportunity and she began eagerly resuming her slurping, sucking, and licking.

She began to feel extreme pleasure at the sensation of being completely filled and soon she began to rock back into Naruto as he came forward in an attempt to take him even deeper. She pulled her hand around and began fingering Sakura in time with Naruto's thrusts as she coaxed her clit out from hiding. She smiled as Sakura's moans began increasing in volume and her own arousal rose to match.

--

Naruto was again at the limit of his control buried deeply inside Ino. Finally he could take no more and he thrust deeply into her jetting out his seed deep into her womb. The sensation of the hot liquid filling her up sent Ino tumbling over the edge and the loud and deep moan that escaped her triggered Sakura's orgasm.

Naruto collapsed against the couch as the two girls climbed up against him and snuggled into his chest kissing his neck and chest before settling down to sleep right where they were.

Naruto smiled exhaustedly at the two kunoichi and wrapped his arms around them before drifting off himself into a sticky and satisfying rest.

-- break --

Naruto woke up later that night with both kunoichi still naked and still clinging to him. He looked at the clock in his kitchen before he exploded into movement waking both the blonde and pink-haired girls.

"SHIT! It's 7:45pm. You girls need to get home so nobody thinks I kidnapped you. Ino I'm going to need to put a seal on you for awhile until you can come back some time and I can do a better one. Sakura you might want to shower while I seal Ino's memories so no one can get them from her."

Sakura nodded and grabbed her clothes before she headed down the hall towards the bathroom. Ino looked curiously at Naruto who was laying out more paper in a two meter by two meter square before digging out his special ink again. She watched as he drew the same symbol on the paper as he'd drawn for Sakura, not that she knew that. The difference was that instead of ending with several unknown symbols before the kanji for 'seal' he ended with the kanji for '6', 'hour', 'lock', 'intruder', and then 'seal'. He gestured for her to enter the center of the sealing circle.

"I'm sorry but this is going to hurt Ino-chan. Do you think you can handle that for me?" asked Naruto looking directly into Ino's blue eyes. She nodded solemnly and knelt there waiting for the pain to start.

Just the same as it had been for Sakura and Hinata before her, Ino screamed horribly as the seal crawly slowly up her body twisting, spinning, and interlocking like some hellacious puzzle box attempting to contain the human body. Thankfully Naruto was getting better at using the seal and although he couldn't lessen the pain he could make the process go faster. Mercifully the process was completed with the seal fading from her forehead in less than two minutes start to finish.

Naruto jumped forward to catch her as she toppled sideways and he cradled her to him for a moment before lifting her bridal style and took her to the shower.

--

Sakura was still washing herself off when Naruto came in holding a limp Ino who was still trembling slightly from the pain. She gently helped Naruto wash her and by the time they began drying her off Ino was mostly okay though she was very subdued. Sakura understood how she felt, after her own experience with the seal all she wanted to do was lie down and be held by Naruto until she couldn't even remember the pain.

By 8:15 they were ready to go and Naruto followed them out for a ways until they turned to head towards the more affluent side of town while he continued towards the portion of Konoha that held more of the ragged shops and dive bars.

-- break --

Naruto stepped out of the tattoo shop at 11pm with a brand new seal array tattooed to his back over his left shoulder blade.

He was quite happy with the design. He had finally completed the seals he had been working on since finishing his mask. He now had a charging seal that siphoned off chakra from his body to power different seals tattooed in the center of a pentagram. His physical resistance seal was tattooed on the top spot, his chakra suppression seal was tattooed on the left spot, he had designed and tested successfully a seal that placed a permanent genjutsu over him (much like Tsunade's of the legendary Sannin youth genjutsu which would fool even the Hyuuga Byakugan and the Uchiha Sharingan) which was on the right spot, which left the two bottom spots open for when and if he ever found some more useful seals to place on himself.

Without the strain from maintaining a constant partial henge Naruto was even more bouncy than usual and was practically skipping with joy. He had already planned to meet up with Ino and Sakura tomorrow after team exercises where he would tell Ino about the Kyuubi but he didn't expect much fuss from that. He'd finally get a good spar from Sakura and with her help and his own unique brand of persuasion they should be able to convince Ino to really live up to her reputation as the highest practical scoring kunoichi academy student in recent history.

-- break --

Mornings, Sakura decided, came far too early. However today was an excellent day already because she could still feel the dull ache left over from her _activities_ last night and she only had to concentrate on them to bring a blush and a smile to her face. Her mother was still nagging at her to quit being a kunoichi but she had no intention of stopping now. Being a ninja had brought her to Naruto and she knew that she would have to help him if he wanted to become Hokage and the best way for her to do that would be to become an incredibly powerful ninja in her own right.

She left the table as quickly as she was able to and rushed to Team 7's training ground so she could see her teammates as soon as possible. Sasuke was an ass but he did represent a means to get the necessary experience with ijutsu and by careful prodding of his pride and use of his tragic fame he could possible be turned into a veritable fount of ninja techniques and jutsu that her Naruto-kun could use.

When she got to the bridge she witnessed Sasuke already there and she swiftly slipped on the now repulsive fan-girl mentality and sided up to him before questioning him extensively on the new techniques he was learning. Several minutes before Naruto would show up she moved away from the emo prick with enough information to hopefully reconstruct three of his prized fire techniques. She already knew that she didn't have enough chakra yet to waste attempting them repeatedly until she ironed out all the details she'd inevitably missed, but with Naruto's help and his eager thirst for jutsu she didn't feel the least bit cocky when she thought that they could figure them out after whatever D-ranked mission they were handed today.

She soon caught sight of Naruto walking up to the bridge and in the guise of being irritated with him she lazily tossed a shuriken with a note attached at him. Predictably he played the fool once he noticed the note and he clumsily dodged allowing the throwing star to imbed in the wood behind him. He pulled out the blade and palmed the note as he returned it to her.

"What the hell Sakura-chan! What did I do this time?" he asked with dramatic hurt lacing his voice.

"Ungh, I don't need a reason, dobe!" Sakura hated herself for even saying that even if she didn't mean it anymore but it did serve to bring up all the times in her memory when she had said something equally unkind to him. She was only capable of continuing the deception and not leaping into his arms begging forgiveness by looking into his eyes and seeing the laughter sparkling there.

--

Naruto had gotten up early to continue his training with the four major elements, well three elements as he didn't know exactly how he was going to practice with fire. He'd thought he'd made some significant process with water and he continued to make steady improvements with wind. By the time he had decided that it was time to leave for his team meeting he had already added the occasional blade to his moderately fast spinning wind shell and the water he'd been sitting on he'd been capable of moving slowly in directions alternate to what the current dictated if not totally against it.

When he arrived at the bridge he was surprised at Sakura's mood and he nearly allowed his tetsusukin to absorb the hit before he noticed the note that was folded discretely into the hole in the center of the spinning blade. He dodged awkwardly and bent to collect the note taking a quick glance at it while his back was turned to his teammates.

_ "Naruto_

_ I've managed to talk Sasuke out of enough details to recreate_

_ the __Katon: Goukakyuu__, the __Katon: Housenka__, and maybe the_

_Katon: Kari Fenikkusu__. I had to act like a fan-girl again but maybe after_

_ the mission we get assigned you can help me figure them out._

_ Much love,_

_ Sakura"_

Naruto mastered his grin, although underneath the mask there really wasn't much to conceal. He turned to face Sakura with the laughter at the thought of Sakura spying on Sasuke still shining in his eyes. He saw her relax and he knew that it was really bothering her that she had to act very nice to someone she no longer respected.

He crumpled up the note in his hand and dropped it off the side of the bridge when he went to sit down with his back against the railing in the middle of the bridge to wait for Kakashi.

-- break --

Their return to D-ranks had left a very sour taste in Sasuke's mouth but both Sakura and Naruto were eagerly looking forward to the abundant training time provided by doing minor chores for only several hours a day. As the Uchiha scion wandered off to his clan compound to go research another trivial or esoteric piece of fire manipulation, Naruto and Sakura raced for Training Ground 43 to collect Ino and then perhaps move to Training Ground 37 to practice the stolen jutsu.

They found Ino very bored and the nearly gave Asuma a heart attack when Ino jumped up and rushed over to them yelling that she was going to be training with them for the rest of the day.

They arrived at Training Ground 37 and decided that the rocky, dusty wasteland was possibly the perfect place to practice fire jutsu except maybe on top of a lake. There was simply nothing there to burn after the chakra in the technique dissipated or was used up. Naruto and Sakura had agreed on the way over that Ino was the perfect fit for a stealth specialist ninja. Her lithe build and good chakra control would allow her to sneak nearly anywhere while suppressing her chakra signature. They had also decided that they could use Ino's training to learn to recognize chakra signatures for themselves.

"Hey Ino, Sakura and I have thought about it a little and we thought that you could make a very good stealth and assassination specialist. We were wondering if you'd thought about what you'd like to specialize in so that we could help you practice and train but if you haven't decided anything we were thinking about what you might be good at. I don't think anyone should be over-specialized but being able to do one thing really well at this level could give you a huge advantage against other genin." Naruto said.

"Well I haven't really thought about it actually. I just assumed I'd be using my family's jutsu and I didn't really think about much more than that."

"Naruto is actually really good at stealthy stuff but his chakra capacity is too big and his control is too bad for him to do that now so he could really help you with that. I know lots of little medical things that would make you more effective when you're taking someone down and we could both help each other learn genjutsu that would be helpful for both of us. That's just what we were thinking anyway," said Sakura.

"Actually that sounds great. Can you imagine all the rumors and dirty little secrets that you could hear if you could sneak around really well?" Ino asked getting quite excited about the possibility of sticking her nose in even more people's business. Naruto chuckled at her enthusiasm.

"Well before I can teach you anything useful you and Sakura are going to have to learn about how to suppress your chakra enough for even the higher level shinobi to miss it. I'm not gonna be a lot of help with that but you and Sakura should be able to sense each other's chakra with practice and you can check each other's progress so you have a little experience before you ask someone who is good at sensing chakra to check your techniques. Now Sakura, you said you got the teme to tell you enough about his techniques that we can recreate them?" asked Naruto with a manic gleam in his eyes.

"Ya, he's really arrogant about it really. He didn't think I would be able to use the techniques and he didn't give me enough credit for being smart enough to figure them out from what he did tell me. I know the basic handseals from watching him do them so many times, you should know them too by the way Naruto you've seen them enough, and today he told me how he was manipulating the chakra in them to get different results. All I had to do was ask with wide eyes how that was different from how he normally did it and suddenly I got a rant on how difficult it was and some exhaustingly complete descriptions on how it's normally done to prove that he's a genius for modifying them so much. Honestly though if I had more chakra I'm sure I could make the same changes with much less waste."

"I'm sure you could but as I'm the one who is going to be spamming Katon jutsu until we get them right I just hope that I have the control necessary."

"Oh it's not going to be that bad. Most Katon jutsu just come out lots bigger if you overpower them which is usually what you do wrong. You won't need much control until you're trying to direct them."

"Let's hope."

Sakura sat down and gestured them all to sit facing her before she dug out a blank scroll that she began filling in with all the details for the jutsu she could remember leaving space between each jutsu for additions to the technique or edits as Naruto figured out what worked. After about forty-five minutes where all three young shinobi bent over the scroll and made comments and suggestions Naruto stood and moved about twenty paces away to try the first one: Katon: Goukakyuu.

Naruto flashed through five handseals before inhaling and breathing out chakra saturated air between his curled fingers using the chakra circulating through them to change the nature of the chakra in the air and igniting it.

It promptly blew up in his face and tossed him flipping like a ragdoll three meters back.

Sakura and Ino barely held in their screams as they sprinted to the downed blonde.

"I'm okay. I think I know what went wrong. I just ignited the chakra but I didn't send it anywhere so I just had a big pocket of exploding fire that wasn't moving away and thought it had reached the target." Naruto protested to their desperate nursing and checking to see that he was okay.

The girls moved back to the scroll and Naruto resumed his place before starting the handseals again. This time he manipulated the breath more like his raw Kaze: Daitoppa without blades but just the dense surge of chakra saturated air. This time when it lit up it became the typical raging fireball it was supposed to be and it exploded against a rock fifteen meters away. Naruto nodded to himself and went back to the scroll to note the differences necessary to creating the jutsu from what they already had written.

The next two hours saw the redevelopment of the Katon: Housenka and the Katon: Kari Fenikkusu and their transcription on three identical scrolls for each of the jutsu reverse engineers to take home.

After their success with stealing the thief's jutsu they moved on with Sakura and Ino learning to suppress their chakra to levels that experienced shinobi wouldn't notice and Naruto working more on his elemental affinities. Sakura and Ino called it good about an hour later and Sakura moved on to learning the fire jutsu while Naruto began the exhausting process of teaching Ino how to remain unseen and unheard using the minimal cover provided by the training ground.

By the end of the day Ino could sneak up on Sakura flawlessly but was still stemmed by Naruto. Ino had learned the value of sounding like the environment as opposed to attempting to not make a sound at all, she had learned that shadows were not always the best places to hide, and she had learned where those better places were. Naruto declared that in a month or two she would be as skilled as he ever was and with a little endurance training she might learn to outrun those she couldn't fool. Naruto and Ino had also taken fifteen minutes to discuss the reasons that Naruto knew so much about hiding. Ino unsurprisingly didn't need more than a minute to adjust to the knowledge that Naruto contained the Kyuubi and after a deep kiss she returned to training.

Sakura had learned the two lower ranked Katon jutsu before she had run too low on chakra to continue. She had finished the several hours remaining by running laps attempting to increase her endurance to match her colossal strength. When she had regained enough chakra she began using it to get a better grip on a huge boulder that she began using like a free-weight.

Naruto hadn't made much progress as he'd been preoccupied with teaching Ino but he figured three new jutsu were nothing to sneeze at and in the long run helping Ino would help him more than just getting his elemental affinities just that much faster.

"So it's agreed that we'll meet here after missions and team meetings everyday unless we have something specific that's stopping us?" asked Sakura.

"Ya, but Asuma-sensei was right when he said that I had to conserve chakra for my clan techniques." Ino replied, nervous that saying so might preclude her training with Naruto and Sakura.

"Think about how much chakra you used today Ino." Ino stopped at Naruto's interjection and took stock of her reserves. "That's right; you haven't used any with us. As long as we keep the jutsu we learn either lower ranked, less chakra intensive, or don't practice them too many times we won't have any problems keeping your reserves full. There's really not much chakra usage to stealth. The point is to do nothing that will get you noticed after all and throwing around chakra like candy in a parade will just get you hunted down faster." Naruto shrugged at the end of this as if to underscore that Ino didn't need to worry.

"I'm actually interested in whether or not you can use minor chakra manipulations precisely enough that they wouldn't be noticed, like tree-climbing or water-walking to get into difficult to infiltrate places." Sakura said. "But that will probably be much further down the line once you've learned to be truly sneaky without the cheats and tricks that ninja use. I know that there are several chakra masking jutsu out there but I get the feeling that if you learn to do the same thing without the jutsu you'll end up a lot better off in the end." Ino nodded at this point. It would be interesting to learn stealth from a master before surpassing him. That was the part she was really looking forward to: the surpassing part.

The three young ninja shared some brief kisses before they moved away from the training ground to go home for dinner and rest.

-- break --

Two months of their extra training had seen some drastic improvements in all three ninja.

Naruto was convinced that he had an unnaturally strong affinity to wind because he had already gotten to the point that he'd chosen as 'good enough' to move on to the other affinities. He was now capable of creating blades out of wind to cover his hands and feet while he was fighting. These deadly additions could be released from his hands and feet with slashing movements to fly out along a path for a short distance doing incredible damage. In addition he was able to use small dense balls of air about the size of his doubled up fists from his fists and feet in straight punches and sidekicks. All these extras gave his kung-fu an extra dimension of range which made it even more perilous to deal with; the several centimeters that he had gained in height didn't help his opponents either.

His water and earth manipulations were coming along steadily and he was able to move water as he wished when he was using grand sweeping gestures. He wasn't quite content with his progress because the range of his manipulations only extended maybe three meters or so. His earth manipulations were just starting but he'd already gotten the hang of fracturing the rocks under his feet so that he was able to kick them up as projectiles and even direct their flight somewhat. As if to directly offset this he was utterly incapable of doing anything with fire. His elemental manipulation was limited to starting Katon jutsu which required you change the nature of your chakra to be able to burn. He wasn't even able to adjust the direction of his jutsu without cheating using the air around the jutsu to direct it which turned out to be very unwieldy and much more chakra exhaustive than it was worth to adjust the flight of a C-rank fire jutsu.

Sakura had added a ridiculous number of medic jutsu and techniques to her library and it seemed to Naruto that she only needed to _touch_ a medical scroll to learn what it contained. She had finally approached her medic sensei about the taijutsu that medics were often seen using. He'd given her a large scroll with all the katas illustrated inside and the names of several taijutsu specialists who might be able to help her. About two weeks after that she had approached Maito Gai about some instruction in it. The theory that the three ninja had worked out together was that the attempt at self improvement could be passed off as an attempt to get closer to Sasuke when he sparred with Lee. Sakura had demonstrated that she was much stronger than the average kunoichi which had prompted Gai to begin teaching her a version of his own Goken that was modified for kunoichi specifically.

She had then decided that if she couldn't feel Ino's chakra when she was suppressing it at a range of at least nine meters she was a total failure as a medic-nin and she had instituted a brutal regime to train herself to that point. She had gotten so precise that she was beginning to feel the differences in someone's chakra when they started different jutsu. Naruto was ecstatic as this meant that she would be able to tell how chakra was being molded in jutsu that she saw which meant that she would know what was coming before it came and eventually she might be able to steal jutsu as easily as the Uchiha. She wasn't quite to that point yet but she was precise enough that she was able to find Ino even when she was sneaking and she could tell the difference between ninjutsu, genjutsu, and the chakra gathered for taijutsu techniques.

Ino had become Naruto's equal in un-augmented stealth in a month and since that time she had far surpassed him by finding ways to use minor chakra techniques while suppressing her chakra. If she didn't want them to, there wasn't a ninja mid-chunin level or lower around that could find her. She was also quickly slurping up genjutsu that would make her life easy. She had found at least a dozen minor genjutsu that would dull the senses of opponents or make her less noticeable in general. Her current favorite was Meisai Gakure no jutsu which camouflaged her form into her background and she was now capable of using it with her chakra suppressed and minimal leaks from the jutsu itself to give her away. She was beginning to look into chakra masking techniques that would make her chakra 'feel' like someone else's or at least not like her own.

She had in the course of her sneaking taken it upon herself to find out who was making Anko so happy lately. When she explained the situation to him Naruto had burst out laughing. She had followed the volatile kunoichi to her former academy sensei's home and had nearly had a stroke when she was met at the door by said academy sensei with a very steamy kiss. Her eagerness to know more than she should had gotten her into trouble and she'd been caught by Iruka when she'd tried to get closer. This led to the discovery of her training, then her dissatisfaction with her sparse jutsu library, then her affinity to water, then to her interest in swords, and finally Ino found herself with a kenjutsu teacher.

-- break --

Today all of the Rookie Nine were going to be assigned a joint mission. Their senseis had ordered them to meet in the mission assignment office at 9am which was ten minutes away. Naruto, Sakura, Ino, Sasuke, Shikamaru, Chouji, Hinata, Haku, Shino, and Kiba were all lounging around the mission hall waiting for their senseis. As the clock struck 9am both Asuma and Kurenai appeared in puffs of smoke. Sarutobi who had told the genin to wait next to his desk caught their attention and got ready to start the briefing.

"Um, Hokage-sama shouldn't we wait for Kakashi-sensei?" asked Kiba.

"Kakashi-kun will be late as always so it would be more efficient if we start now and I just give him the mission scroll for his team when he shows up." Sarutobi paused as the genin nodded to that or shot incredulous glances at the members of Team 7. "This mission is actually three missions that we are going to combine due to their interconnected nature. A merchant company has been having trouble with bandits in one of the towns that they typically stop at to re-supply, restock and rest while moving along their route. As such they've taken out three missions.

"The first will go to Team 10 which will be assigned to escort and protect the caravan that will be traveling there from here.

"The second assignment will be assigned to Team 8 with Haku as an addition. Their job will be to help restore the town while protecting as many of the residents as possible during the course of the restoration. Your mission scroll details what type of jobs you are responsible for, mostly they are similar to D-rank construction and demolition missions but have been upgraded to C-rank due to the hostile nature of the area.

"The third mission will go to Team 7 which is to hunt down and remove the threat of bandits by any means deemed necessary. This is normally a C-rank that I would give to an older team who have already been blooded so to speak but as Team 7 already has experience in cleaning up bandits it made sense to keep the rookies together to promote interaction between teams as well as allow some cross training between senseis that may be better suited to the specific training needs of an individual in another team."

This drew several reactions from all the ninja involved. Team 10 just nodded once their mission was assigned. Hinata practically glowed with pleasure at being able to indulge her kind heart in a constructive manner towards helping people rebuild. Kiba nearly exploded at being forced to do D-ranked missions somewhere else under the guise of a C-rank mission. Everyone's eyes nearly bugged out when they heard that Team 7 was already experienced with bandit eradication. The two senseis were especially shocked as the subtle undercurrents in the Hokage's tone told them that some members of Team 7 had already made their first kills.

"You're employer is the Akyuudo Corporation and the leader for the caravan whom you will be answering to is Shoujin-san. The twelve of you will travel with him until you get to Fukutoshi where he and several wagons and workers will stay to help rebuild the town. Team 10 you will stay with the wagons and workers that stay. Team 8 you will be marginally at the disposal of Shoujin-san when you begin constructing the necessary buildings and your other duties and you will follow his orders where they don't interfere with your sensei's. Team 7 you will operate from the same building that your fellow teams will secure within the town but likely you will remain mostly mobile."

All the teams and teachers nodded their understanding.

"Well then all that's left is for you to pack for at least two weeks but more likely a month and meet Shoujin-san and his caravan at the south gate." Sarutobi smiled at the genin. "I'll give Kakashi his scroll when he gets here in about fifteen minutes."

"Team 8 you have thirty minutes to pack and meet at the south gate. Dismissed," Kurenai said.

"Team 10 you have thirty minutes to pack and meet at the south gate. We will need to go over some escort procedures when we get there so it would be best if you're early." Asuma said.

"Well Team 7 why don't you meet at the south gate in thirty minutes as well and I'll just send your sensei along when he shows up." Sarutobi said before he turned back to his paperwork in a clear sign of dismissal.

The genin fled out the door trailed by their senseis until only Naruto remained behind.

"Have you gotten any response yet ojiisan?" asked Naruto.

"No, nothing yet but it's only been a month." Sarutobi responded thinking about Naruto's question and what had led to it.

_-Flashback-_

_*one month ago*_

_Sarutobi sat in his office, across his desk sat Naruto and Sakura. The aging Hokage was looking forward to the coming explanation that this visit would provide. He was eager to know what changes Naruto was going through that the blonde deemed drastic enough to bring to him._

"_So what kind of changes have you been going through and how is Sakura-chan involved?" asked Sarutobi. In response Naruto jolted a bolt of chakra through the part of the seal tattoo that would take down his genjutsu that hid his new bestial features. Sarutobi immediately got serious at the sight of the pointed ears, sharp claws, and slit pupils. Naruto tugged down his mask and smiled to reveal his much altered teeth as well._

"_We're not really sure what happened but I was helping Sakura with an experimental ijutsu she was performing on herself to make herself a more effective kunoichi." Naruto nodded to Sakura who held up a kunai in her hands and then proceeded to bend it in half without straining or using chakra. Sarutobi's mouth nearly dropped open at the casual display of monstrous strength. "She was trying to imitate Tsunade's strength after she decided to go the path of the medic-nin with her nearly perfect chakra control. She found a way to fundamentally alter her muscle structure to make herself much stronger but she needed…_

_Naruto continued to explain the process and incident from his view with interjections from Sakura correcting what he had wrong or adding more detail where she thought necessary. By the end of the story Sarutobi knew that he was dealing with another pair of prodigies. To figure out a new medical procedure from scratch was unheard of, even for the female Sannin at that age._

…_think that the reaction between the healing chakra and the backlash through my body was the catalyst for my physical changes." Naruto finished the story and took a drink before he went into what all the changes were._

"_Well that's not how Tsunade did it to my knowledge. She did use ijutsu but only to make her existing muscle more efficient. From there she used incredibly precise chakra augmentation to increase her strength many times past simple saturation. I believe that the explosive results she achieves are related to a final burst of chakra she releases at the point of impact but she refuses to tell me that final part." Sarutobi smiled ruefully at that. It wasn't like he could steal his student's technique; he didn't have the requisite skill in ijutsu… and he wouldn't stoop that low, of course._

"_Ha! And you said that it couldn't be a release of chakra at impact!" exclaimed Sakura turning on Naruto._

"_I believe I said I didn't know but I didn't think it was likely because the Hyuuga don't shatter things with their strikes." Naruto responded. "Back on topic. You can see most of the changes: my pupils, my ears, my teeth. You can't see that my bones are much harder to break and there have been some minor changes in position of my limbs to give me more range of motion. My senses are much more acute and when I push chakra into my eyes I can see through all the genjutsu I've seen since being like this. It doesn't break them so much as fade them out so I can see past them. Sakura hasn't seen a way to undo the changes but I don't want to so she's not looking too hard. I tried to copy Tsunade's youth genjutsu and came up with a variation of a powerful permanent genjutsu that's powered and controlled by a seal that hides my features. I was thinking about dropping it for combat because I can use my eyes and claws to great effect and calling the change a bloodline or a jutsu like the Inuzuka's beast mimicry."_

"_That sounds reasonable. Thank you for telling me this and for bringing to light Sakura's incredible skill. I think we should discretely contact Tsunade to give her a chance to check you both out to make sure there were no mistakes but I'm amazed that you have come so far in skill." Sarutobi suggested._

"_That would be great! If she could come back she could teach Sakura-chan!" exclaimed Naruto._

_-end flashback-_

Sarutobi shook his head at his nostalgia around the genin. He waved Naruto off to go pack for his mission and waited for Kakashi to show up. He wondered idly if just starting without Kakashi would encourage him to show up on time so he wouldn't miss things. The old leader chuckled to himself as he defined a new Kakashi S.O.P. (standard operating procedure)

-- break --

Naruto arrived at the south gate to see all the genin milling around off to the side of a group of twelve wagons and all their assorted animals, wares, and people. He smiled widely, happy to be off on another mission. His noisy geta and bells alerted his fellow Konoha shinobi to his approach and several of them looked up at him as he came over. He could almost read their thoughts in their eyes.

'_How in Kami's name does he think he's going to hide with all that noise he's making?'_: Kiba.

'_Hn'_: Sasuke.

'_I wonder what the bells are for?'_: Chouji.

'_What are you hiding with all these peculiarities Naruto?'_: Shikamaru.

He smiled even wider at the thought of stumping Shikamaru. Naruto had already known that Shikamaru was much smarter than his effort would lead you to assume. Being surprising to the genius was a manner of no small amount of pride to the bubbly blonde. He clacked and jingled his way over to where his teammates were sitting.

"So, what's the tentative plan for rooting out the bandits and convincing them they need to leave Fukutoshi alone?" asked Naruto.

"Well we won't know much until we get there but we could think of several different plans based on different assumptions." Sakura said reasonably.

"We should just kill them all." Naruto looked at Sasuke with a harsh glare.

"As you have the least number of kills to your name in present company perhaps you should defer the suggestions that involve killing people to those who have done it." Naruto bit out in a tone that was almost acidic. Kiba and Shikamaru both started at this semi-revelation that implied that both Naruto and Sakura had killed already. Naruto reminded himself to give Kiba's ears more credit in the future and never to underestimate a nosey genius.

"Logically Naruto almost all of our possible plans will involve killing some bandits regardless."

"I know that Sakura-chan, but there are ways to minimize it. I just don't like the teme's attitude that human life isn't worth much. Beyond that it wasn't a very good suggestion because there's no guarantee that the bandits wouldn't just hole up after the first several get offed and stay low until we leave. So his 'solution' doesn't even solve the problem."

"Maybe we will need to use a show of force though. Maybe if we can get a lot of them to witness something particularly gruesome they will be inclined to leave."

"I'd still like to avoid something that makes me or you look particularly demonic or bloodthirsty."

"We'll try but you have to be open to the possibility that a show of overwhelming force and brutality might be the least bloody way to resolve it." Sakura continued reasonably as if she weren't suggesting that one of them tear a man apart in a bloody way with an overpowered jutsu or some such.

The continued to discuss several options for large numbers of bandits in both small groups and large groups, small numbers of bandits working as individuals or in small groups, even briefly touching on the possibility of it being an offshoot of a different crime organization from somewhere else and whether or not they would have to travel to the original source to dismantle that too.

Eventually Kakashi showed up right at the end of the allotted thirty minutes. Apparently he had rushed to get ready for such a long mission after arriving at the Hokage's office just ten minutes ago. He immediately moved over to his team to asses their readiness and to make sure they knew the mission.

The convoy set out five minutes after Kakashi's arrival and the 'all ready' had been given.

-- break --

They had been on the trail for most of the day before the teams began to mix amongst themselves. It started with Teams 8 and 7. Because they didn't have any immediate or pressing duties that required them to be more alert or occupied than just walking they began to talk amongst themselves just to alleviate the boredom.

"So, Shino, you're full of bugs. How's that treating you?" asked Naruto with his typical lack of tact.

"They are very effective allies."

Naruto just nodded at this and let the subject go. Maybe he would have more luck suppressing his instincts to fight with Kiba than trying to get a conversation out of the bug-nin. He'd tried several times to get a conversation going and this last attempt at appealing to what might interest Shino had elicited the longest response yet and Naruto was done trying.

Sakura was chatting eagerly with both Hinata and Haku as Kurenai listened from a distance. Naruto wondered if all girls were capable of talking to each other automatically or if guys were just naturally defective conversationalists. _Just look at Sasuke all he can do is grunt_ thought Naruto. _Actually…_ now that was a thought. Naruto moved over to his teammate.

"Sasuke," Naruto whispered. Sasuke's head whipped around trying to tell who had said his name. Naruto grinned evilly as he formed eight quick handseals for the voice projection jutsu. He released the chakra in the technique around Sasuke and tethered the sending end to his bells. He smirked at Kurenai and Sakura who had felt the jutsu go up and were precise enough to know where it was being directed and who was doing the directing. He pointed at his head for the benefit of both ladies as he began to ring the bells in a rhythm that sounded like a cross between "Ring Around the Rosy" which he'd heard used very successfully in a horror movie and an Evanescence song. He nearly broke down laughing as Sasuke stopped dead in the trail and began frantically looking for the source of the bells.

Kurenai frowned before she made a few handseals herself so she could get the effect of the jutsu on herself. She was amazed when she immediately heard the creepy sounding bells. She canceled her jutsu and listened to Naruto, sure enough the sound normally generated by his bells had disappeared.

"Naruto you might want to modify your jutsu so that it produces a normal sounding jingling so you don't tip people off by silencing your bells totally." Kurenai smirked as Sasuke spun towards Naruto with rage clearly evident in his eyes. Naruto turned a very hurt look towards her.

"Kurenai-sensei! He wouldn't have even noticed for another thirty minutes that it was me and I would have stopped before then. You just had to ruin my entertainment didn't you? But the jutsu doesn't need to make the sound of my bells around it's supposed to be a fear device where I'm hiding and then I project the jutsu all around my target to unnerve them." To demonstrate he formed the same eight handseals and dropped the emitting part around the ninjas who were listening to the conversation. All the affected ninjas jerked when they heard the same bell song that Sasuke heard coming from all around them which except for his clacking geta would have made it impossible to locate Naruto just by sound.

"That's very good Naruto. Where did you come up with that idea?" asked Kurenai. She was shocked by exactly how effective that was at unnerving her.

"Well I got the bell idea from my favorite manga. I actually get a lot of ideas for techniques from that. I started ringing the bells as a chakra control exercise but I heard a really creepy song on a horror movie that sounded simple enough for me to play. Since it freaked me out I figured it might freak other people out. When we met Zabuza in wave he used a voice projection to be intimidating while never revealing his position and I thought that if it worked for him it might work for me too." Kurenai nodded at this logic as he canceled the technique.

"Can you show us what you meant by modifying the technique anyway, Kurenai-sensei?" asked Sakura eager for more genjutsu.

While Kurenai, Sakura, and Hinata had a discussion about aural genjutsu Haku moved to walk next to Naruto.

"I'd like to thank you for what you did." Haku said. Naruto looked at her curiously. "When you brought me back with you to Konoha and found me a good home. You risked a lot for me even though I tried to kill you. I hated you for awhile you know. I thought that if you hadn't defeated be then I might have saved Zabuza-sama, but I know now that I wouldn't have made it in time." Haku hung her head. "And when you took me back home with you, you risked a lot betting your life on the assumption that I would behave."

Naruto chuckled at that. "Oh that was never in question. Hinata-chan is far too agreeable for anyone to disobey her. She has this amazing disappointed look that she gives you when you do something wrong that somehow feels much worse than any punishment. You're right that I did risk a lot but I knew you would make an effort if the rewards were great enough and there is no greater reward for people like us than having a home that accepts us."

Haku nodded at this. People like her and Naruto who were the outcasts worked very hard for even the smallest amount of approval from those around them. "I've realized that I'm not just a tool anymore. Hinata-chan has helped me a lot and I will forever be working to pay her back for it but I feel like I need to repay you as well for making it possible."

"If you want to pay me, help Hinata become a more confident kunoichi. She's skilled in her own way but her family doesn't appreciate her type of skill. She's very much the personality of a medic-nin and her fluid grace is unsuited to the harsh precise movements of the traditional Jyuuken. Because she doesn't take to the style in the same cookie-cutter manner that all the rest of the clan does they shun her and call her weak. If you want to repay me you need to help Hinata develop her own version of her family's style and gain back the confidence that her clan has beaten from her." Naruto said to Haku in a hushed voice. Haku nodded and immediately Naruto swung back to his typical happy and bouncy self.

"So what can you tell me about ice jutsu? Do you know any more wind jutsu? I know you used one against me when we fought but I already figured that one out so now I'm looking for more!" exclaimed Naruto eagerly leaning forward as if being closer would bring the knowledge he sought faster than otherwise. Haku looked stunned at the total shift in personality. She had been under the impression from Hinata that Naruto was a brilliant shinobi and her fight with him had borne that out but the teenager beside her was the picture of the young, green, wet-behind-the-ears genin. She looked closer at him and barely caught the flash in his eyes of the same competence and ferocity that he had displayed in their fight and she understood that this was all an elaborate mask that he wore. She mentally congratulated him as an actor and bumped his reputation as a shinobi up even further in her own mind. She had thought that Hinata was kidding when she had dismissed her own skill at deception and lauded Naruto as a master but it seemed he deserved her glowing report.

"I doubt you'd be able to do ice jutsu. As far as I know it's a bloodline of my family and only we've ever been able to do it. I know a couple wind jutsu but the one you saw and totally overrode was my strongest wind attack. I've got a mid-C-rank shield, Kaze: Bousekisara, that blocks most thrown weapons and I've got a weak D-rank one that allows you to change your position midair."

"Well the shield might be nice to know but I already know how to move myself around a little in midair."

"Well, it has four handseals," she showed him which ones, "and then you must concentrate on a disk in front of you and make it spin around like a twirling plate. It spins the air around and bleeds wind from the edges so you have to supply more wind through the center which is what stops kunai from piercing through the middle. When the projectiles hit it they are flung to the edges and away so you need to make sure that none of your allies are standing on the edge of the jutsu before you use it."

Naruto nodded and formed the handseals before attempting the technique without anything being thrown at it. Predictably he overpowered it and the disk showed up almost a solid three meters in diameter and dug a thin trench deep into the road where it intercepted the ground. Haku and Naruto started coughing as the dust kicked up by the jutsu. Without thinking it through Naruto flashed through the same four handseals, called out the technique, and powered it up with much less chakra than before. The result was a much weaker shield that swept all the dust away to the outsides of the road admirably but would be useless against anything more dangerous than a civilian with a senbon.

Asuma saw the dust cloud and after telling his genin team to stick with their patrols up and down the caravan he went to check out what caused it. He arrived just in time to see Naruto finish clearing away the dust with his second jutsu.

"I can see why you would want to practice your wind affinity. You must be very strongly natured towards wind to get such huge differences in jutsu power with only minor changes. I bet you find Katon jutsus particularly unwieldy don't you?" asked Asuma.

"Well I wouldn't know about the Katon thing; I've only got the fire-starting jutsu by way of Katon jutsus." Naruto answered. Sure he was lying through his teeth having stolen Sasuke's Katon: Ryuuka a week before bringing his total of Katon jutsus up to five.

"I suppose I could part with one of my jutsu to help a fellow wind user. The trick with wind is that it's so plentiful. Wind is the war element, more so than any other element, wind jutsus kill. Even fire jutsu aren't as effective, although they are often more visible. When most people think of a wind jutsu they think of a blast of air with lots of very sharp blades but those aren't our most effective jutsu at all. Anyone can raise a barrier or dodge to avoid those. We become really deadly when our control advances to the point that we can pull the air away from our enemies rather than sending more at them. This jutsu is a low C-rank but it provides the basis towards some of the most deadly wind jutsu I know of. It's called Kaze: Kuuhaku like its name suggests it pulls all the air out of an area defined by how much chakra you use. It's a low ranked jutsu because the vacuum isn't strong enough to forcibly pull the air out of your opponent's lungs but some higher class jutsu can do that. It sets up the base for learning those harder ones though."

"Wow, that's awesome Asuma-sensei." Naruto said as he eagerly soaked in the eleven handseals needed for the technique and committed the explanation of how to mold the chakra to memory. After about ten minutes of further explanation on wind jutsu in general Asuma returned to doing random sweeps along the caravan looking for threats.

Naruto's conversation with Haku and then Asuma had sparked some interest in what type of elemental affinity all the genin had. It was revealed that Asuma was wind, Kakashi was lightning (which Naruto believed to be an old kekkei genkai that nearly an eighth of the population had that mixed the elements wind and fire), and Kurenai was fire. There was quite a bit of discussion about how an elemental affinity effected a shinobi and it was explained that for a ninjutsu specialist like Kakashi it meant that lightning jutsu would be easier to use meaning the more he knew of them the longer he could fight and the more effective he would be. Asuma had chosen, like most wind users, to allow his affinity to imbue every part of his shinobi life, from which ninjutsu he used all the way to augmenting his taijutsu. In Kurenai's case the affinity didn't mean much at all, as a genjutsu user control was prized over capacity and so she didn't have the reserves to perform the high level and truly destructive Katon ninjutsu and her affinity meant very little to her.

After hearing how one of their senseis practically lived and breathed his affinity and how important it was to another the genin were determined to know their own affinities. Even Team 10 who had caught bits and pieces of the conversation as they moved past the other ninja wanted to know where they stacked up in the elemental scheme of things. As it turned out Kakashi had been toting around chakra paper that he'd been meaning to get converted into more effective explosive tags but they were sacrificed in the name of determining the affinities of the genin.

"All you have to do is hold the paper in your hand and channel chakra through it. If it gets cut you are a wind type, if it crumples up you are a lightning type, if it gets wet you are a water type, if it turns to dust you are an earth type, and if it burns you are a fire type. I suppose if Haku were to try it hers would freeze but we don't want to waste paper on the people we already know the affinity of." Here Kurenai nodded at both Haku and Naruto.

The genin all walked in a group as they concentrated chakra into the papers. Team 8, having worked with a genjutsu mistress of no small repute and as such concentrated on chakra control, was the first to manage to saturate the papers with enough chakra. Hinata was found to be a water element, something that had been obvious to Naruto from the way that she moved through her taijutsu katas. Shino's paper crumbled to dust and he nodded with satisfaction; the members of the Aburame clan had been earth users since past the point anyone could remember. Kiba predictably pushed too much chakra into his paper and it didn't so much light on fire as explode in his face.

Team 10 was next to get their papers to react. Ino was a water nature as they had discovered earlier and her paper became damp before she decided that she had obviously channeled enough. Shikamaru rather surprisingly had his paper light on fire. Naruto had been sure that the lazy genin would have been earth or water with his general attitude towards apathy and laziness. _He isn't being very lazy now with how he's trying to get rid of that paper before it burns him_ Naruto thought. Chouji barely waited for his paper to react at all before his hand disappeared once again into his ever-present bag of chips. The paper drifted softly down even as it turned to dust when he dropped it.

Team 7 was by-and-large a known as far as elemental affinities went. Naruto was already known to be a wind element, even if that wasn't entirely true with his personal training to get them all. Sasuke could only be fire or lightning and nobody was surprised when his paper lit on fire and he allowed it to burn away to ashes in his hand discretely protecting his palm with chakra. _He is such an attention whore for being so standoffish_ thought Naruto once again. Sakura was really the only one nobody knew enough about to guess. Naruto was pleasantly surprised to see her sheet of paper become dust indicating an earth element. If he remembered correctly water elements typically were more common among medic-nins but Tsunade herself was an earth element.

The genin spent the rest of the day discussing what their new elements meant to them and what they might end up doing with them. It amused Naruto and Haku to see everyone quickly grouping off with those of a similar element to discuss them. The fire elements however broke off their discussion quickly once they realized that Kiba was the only one talking with Sasuke brooding and Shikamaru just muttering 'troublesome' under his breath referring to all the new things that he was going to have to do. Chouji and Sakura seemed to be having an interesting discussion on how they might incorporate their element into what they did normally. They seemed to reach the conclusion that they really couldn't do anything until they learned some jutsu but they both remembered seeing shinobi raise rock walls to guard themselves or others and Sakura shared how certain Iwa-nin had been known to toughen up their skin with earth element chakra. Ino and Hinata were both having a whispered conversation that Naruto was totally sure had nothing to do with water. With both of them knowing each other to prefer the fairer sex, having had that awkward conversation once Naruto had introduced them properly, Naruto was sure they were discussing their respective love lives and who was hot or not. Naruto and Haku having no one of the same element to talk to continued their discussion about ice techniques as they walked.

-- break --

The genin arrived at Fukutoshi on the fourth day of their travels. During the intervening time Naruto had mastered his two new wind jutsu sufficiently to consider them combat worthy in their fashion. Sakura and Ino had pestered Kurenai for some new genjutsu techniques and now had three more to use. Sasuke had capitalized on the redundant knowledge of his element type to get Kakashi to hand him another fire jutsu but neither Naruto nor his girls had seen him use it or had heard what it was to copy it yet. Knowing Kakashi though Naruto would put good money on it being a B-ranked jutsu to salve the emo prick's pride at seeing 'the dobe' learn two new jutsu.

Naruto smirked a little at the remembrance of a short spar that Kakashi had conducted between teammates to judge their readiness for the bandits they were sure to encounter.

_-flashback-_

_Kakashi had taken Team 7 off into the woods surrounding the caravan's latest resting point. Usually the caravan would stop in the towns that it passed and sell to the residents and then make camp there instead of risking the woods and ignoring the possible profit but such was the errand that the trading caravan was half composed of relief wagons headed specifically for Fukutoshi and so the normal traders had to wait until they had delivered those wagons to the town before they could begin their own trading._

_Team 7 was currently moving away from the campsite to ensure they had enough room to have a three way spar between the genin. Kakashi wanted them to get used to the local terrain that they would be likely fighting in and he wanted to assure they were ready to fight bandits at all._

"_Okay this is far enough. You aren't always going to be able to choose the battlefield that you are comfortable fighting in so we are going to have a spar amongst the trees. Visibility will be cut down and long-range jutsus will be nearly useless. You all are going to have to rely on close combat strategies and very sparing mid-range jutsus. It will be every person for themselves, no lethal jutsu or jutsu that could become lethal in the circumstances. For example, Sakura you cannot use your sight inhibiting jutsu on Naruto right when Sasuke throws kunai or shuriken at him even though that would be an acceptable strategy for a bandit or even low level enemy ninja." Both Naruto and Sakura nearly snorted at the notion of Sakura helping Sasuke before helping Naruto and the absolute ludicrousness of helping anyone to hurt Naruto. "Remember also that the bandits will mostly be on the ground and incapable of coming up into the trees after you. It is a smart tactic to do damage to them and then escape into the trees to come back around to do more damage from a different angle." Kakashi waited for the nods._

"_Remember to look for opportunities that your teammates might inadvertently create against another teammate or themselves when they engage. Keep all the fighting below a ceiling of ten meters. Hajime!" he yelled and disappeared in a burst of speed as he jumped away._

_The three genin split into the trees and Kakashi was momentarily confused that Naruto stayed on the ground until he noticed Sasuke closing in for the attack. Sasuke formed the five handseals for __Katon: Goukakyuu__ and shot a reduced fireball on course for where Naruto would be when it hit. Naruto pulled to a stop suddenly, _almost as if he'd felt the jutsu form_ thought Kakashi _but he's nowhere near sensitive enough to feel that_. Sasuke's fireball impacted a full meter in front of Naruto and the blonde immediately tracked the direction of the fireball back to his opponent before he began forming seals._

_--_

_Sasuke cursed at the miss but began copying Naruto's seals with his Sharingan as soon as he saw Naruto making them. He was curious about why Naruto was making them slower than usual and why he closed his eyes at the last minute. He found out about the closed eyes when his hands erupted in an absolutely blinding flash of light. He cursed himself as he realized he'd been tricked into copying an emergency flash technique with his eyes open. He was blind now and didn't hear Sakura's approach until he felt a sharp burst of chakra and knew nothing more until after the end of the sparring session._

_--_

_Naruto watched Sakura sneak up behind a blinded Sasuke and knock him out with an ijutsu she'd learned. She jumped down towards him launching kunai that glinted with wires. He knew that his 'dobe' persona would miss them and he dodged into them like he would have if he hadn't known about the wires. He was quickly tied up and in the instant that it took for him to free himself Sakura closed the distance and threw a punch. It connected directly with his head and while it wasn't even close to as powerful as she was capable of delivering it was still enough to disrupt his unenforced __Kage Bunshin__ which puffed into smoke that momentarily blinded Sakura. Naruto grinned and appeared behind the pink-haired girl in a burst of speed to put a kunai to her throat._

_He was justifiably surprised when he felt the razor edge of a wire around his throat declaring the match a tie. He was even more surprised to see that the wire was actually a single strand of her hair. Naruto grinned even wider and resolved to ask her how she did that so he could use it._

_--_

_Kakashi was surprised at a tie between his two worst students but he decided that of course Sakura would be the one intelligent enough to get the hint about attacking one of the shinobi who was already occupied and distracted by combat. He was alternately glad though that they were only facing bandits who could be defeated easily by simple taijutsu, thrown weapons and repeated uses of the kawarimi. It was nothing short of a miracle that his soldiers had lived through their first botched C-rank mission. He knew that Naruto was decent with taijutsu and except for that trick Sasuke was good enough but for him to be beaten by a trick was unacceptable. It would seem as though Kakashi would need to go into more detail about how the Sharingan should be used and what its weaknesses were. You couldn't go around copying every jutsu you saw without knowing what it was and if it would hurt you to use it._

"_Good job Team 7. Sakura, that was a nice use of Naruto's distraction to take out Sasuke. Sasuke, you can't just copy every jutsu thrown at you. You have to know at least relatively what it is going to be before you should use it. That's not going to matter very much against bandits who can't use jutsu but keep it in mind for the future. Naruto, that was a good distraction using your clone but you have to remember that just because you have a knife to someone's throat doesn't mean you've beaten them." Kakashi summarized._

"_We'll be arriving tomorrow, and once we help secure a building that the portion of the caravan staying and the other Teams can use, we will be scouting the area for the bandits and trying to ascertain their numbers. Get a good night's sleep tonight; it's going to be a long day tomorrow."_

_-end flashback-_

They moved into the town which was centered in a large clearing filled with rice paddies owned by the farmers who lived in the outskirts. It wasn't much of a town really; just three roads coming together with several shops devoted to supporting the steady stream of merchants who took this route. The damage caused by the bandits was easy to see with many of the farmers' homes burned or smashed and the streets totally deserted despite it being nearly noon.

The three shinobi teams immediately started surveying the town for a suitable building to commandeer for the duration of their stay in the town. Team 10 was looking for someplace that had enough room around it or the proper facilities to house the six wagons that would be staying with them. Team 8 was looking for a building that was large enough to hold refugees while they reconstructed the burnt out and wrecked houses on the outskirts while still being able to house the injured they were sure to have to treat. Team 7 was just looking for a place they could all sleep in without having to worry about having their throats slit in the night.

Thankfully Shoujin-san already had a building and grounds in mind when they hired the shinobi and he took them straight to it. It was formerly an inn and had a stable with a dirt courtyard in back that would house the wagons and oxen while keeping them safe from looting and vandalism. The inn itself had some twenty rooms that all contained two futons and could hold more people on the floors.

The Teams broke off and began doing the chores allotted to them dictated by their duties to the company. Team 7 split up and fanned out from the inn to search the town for bandits and threats inside the immediate area before they would work out a rotating sweep of the outskirts for the night. Team 8 searched through the inn itself for traps or other unsavory things of that nature before they began unloading the wagons devoted to medical supplies and food rations. Team 10 searched the stables before leading the caravan to unhitch and they took up watch positions around the inn focusing on the entrance. The innkeeper and his wife came out to help somewhat but they were soon rebuffed and told to wait somewhere the ninja could see them while they searched the inn. After the search was completed they were allowed back into the inn where they made dinner for the whole caravan and began resuming the typical role of innkeepers.

The first day was indeed a long one that continued well into the night before the majority of the ninja got to rest leaving just two awake at a time, one to guard the inn and one to sweep the town edges.

-- break --

The next morning Sakura, Kakashi, and Sasuke were woken by the sunrise and after eating breakfast and getting some to take to Naruto they set out to the outskirts to discuss their findings and their plan of action. They found Naruto talking with a shopkeeper who was up early.

"So you say that the bandits live in a camp up in the eastern part of the forest?" asked Naruto. He sounded exasperated as if he'd been talking to townspeople for several hours and had either been getting different answers or the same tripe that they had been fed by Inari in Wave country.

"Yes, we all know where they are because they always come and leave that way, but there's a different number every time."

"Thank you, shopkeeper-san. We'll do our best to correct the problem." Naruto slumped over to the rest of Team 7 and kept walking past them idly waving his hand for them to follow.

"Well, as far as I can tell it's like this: the bandits always come in and leave from the east and about midday we should see smoke rising from that direction about three kilometers away. Nobody seems to know how many of them there are though. I've talked to three people and that last guy was by far the most truthful, the first guy I talked to told me there were 500 of them which I seriously doubt; even given how relatively harmless bandits are to ninja an army of 500 of them would be something we'd hear about. One guy left the town and headed east at around 4am but I didn't stop him. I figured we want the bandits to know we're here since we didn't split from the caravan to go assassinate them or anything."

Kakashi was mildly shocked to hear Naruto casually mentioning use of intelligent logic. It really shouldn't have been surprising really as Naruto had demonstrated he knew how it worked just usually chose not to indulge in it. Kakashi was now going over various plans that were very tolerant of huge number disparity. Since they didn't know the enemy numbers he couldn't do anything truly specific by way of troop maneuvers and not knowing the terrain he couldn't use troop numbers to predict likely evacuation routes that they would have to seal or stand in.

"We need more information before we can do anything. We should begin heading in the same general direction as the man last night did and use the smoke we see to pinpoint the camp. We should look for total numbers and apparent skill level as well as scoping out the terrain to get a feel for how they will move in an attack. Naruto you will be on point until you lose track of where the man went then I will take over once we find the bandit camp we will split into groups of two and move around the perimeter of their camp in opposite directions meeting in the rear. Keep your radios' on but maintain silence unless it's vitally important." The genin nodded and Naruto took off along the raised hills separating the rice paddies heading in the direction of the forest.

The four ninja moved silently through the woods towards the smoke that was slowly curling up above the treetops. The camp was situated in a basin where the valley between two large hills had been somehow made wider. The bandits were just waking up and the noise the ninja could already hear seemed to indicate that the news of their arrival had not yet made the rounds of the camp. Either that or they weren't worried about having three ninja teams around but if that were the case there was probably something very important about the bandits that the ninja didn't know yet.

Team 7 came upon the bandit camp and immediately began trying to get a general head count of the bandits. As they counted they began observing what they could about them.

"Okay, we're going to split up now. I'll take Sasuke around the south side of the camp while Naruto and Sakura will circle around to the north. We will meet up at the west end of their camp. Remember to turn your radios on and try to suppress your chakra as much as possible. Some of these men look like they're Daimyo samurai deserters, which means that there are also likely to be ninja academy dropouts here who will feel excess chakra and be able to identify it, maybe even track it." Kakashi gave his orders and waited for the nods in return. Sakura and Naruto immediately took to the lower tree branches and began hopping around to the north making sure to stay well back into the tree line.

--

Naruto was in front of Sakura as they moved through the trees. When they were on the northern most side of the camp he stopped and motioned her to come close.

"How many do you see? I count about fifty, maybe fifty-five tops. Probably thirty ex-samurai and I can feel chakra use somewhere in the middle of the camp. That worries me, if I can feel it that means our mystery nin is probably chunin level." Naruto whispered.

"No, that's not right. There aren't any ninja here. Samurai who serve the Daimyo's are taught to use chakra to make themselves stronger and faster. At first it was just a technique that they stole from ninja to make them more effective but it's been in use so long that they take a totally different view of it. The samurai don't use jutsu but the really high-level ones can augment their weapons to make them stronger and sharper; when they meditate they can heal their wounds faster. They are all constantly, actively circulating chakra through their bodies to get the speed and strength benefits so their chakra signatures always feel bigger than their reserves can account for.

"I count fifty-four here and I can feel that thirty-two of them can use chakra like samurai use it. They'll be harder to kill or intimidate, they will have been trained to face ninja. The one you can feel is easily the strongest or he's projecting his chakra out to make himself feel that way to the others. My bet is on him actually being that strong. I can't imagine thirty-two samurai hanging around a weak leader if they've split off from their lord to join him." Sakura explained.

Naruto nodded and continued scanning the camp. "It doesn't make sense though. Why would they attack here? There's nothing important enough in Fukutoshi to justify the effort. If they're unsatisfied with their service it would make more sense to set themselves up as a new government in one of the buffer lands between the five major nations. There's something else here that we're not seeing. Nobody that powerful is going to be satisfied with harassing merchant caravans by repeatedly looting a town. Better to just take it over, wall it off, and start charging a toll to go through it. If they set up as a magistrate and improved on the town they would be given legitimacy by the Daimyo and they would still have their honor, or something similar. Any way you look at it we're missing something. Let's report to Kakashi. You should bring up the discrepancy; he'll take it better from you."

They were off again still on high alert. They got to the place they were supposed to meet with Kakashi and Sasuke at the end of the camp and saw them in a tree observing the bandits finishing the morning preparations. Naruto and Sakura jumped into the branches near them and waited for the chance to share what they'd learned and to hear their next orders.

"So what did you find out?" asked Kakashi without taking his eyes off the camp.

Sakura decided to start and just summarize what Naruto and she had determined. "Naruto and I counted fifty-four and fifty-five bandits total and we noticed thirty or thirty-two likely trained as samurai for a Daimyo. There was one in the center we believe to be the leader samurai who seems to be putting out a chunin level chakra signature. I don't think that this is right though, sensei. It doesn't make sense. They aren't accomplishing anything that warrants this many men in one place. There must be another agenda here. Over half their force has been well trained and might even be prepared to face the number of ninja we brought, not the jonin of course, but even if Konoha sent two chunin squads they have the numbers to fend them off down there."

"I agree, Sasuke and I counted fifty-four in camp and we must assume that the force numbers sixty in total with five or six that we haven't seen yet who are in the town or wandering the woods hunting or guarding. The samurai in the center of camp is of a high enough level to have been a captain and I would bet most of the samurai down there are from his former command. We will eventually need to know what they are doing here besides looting the town to keep themselves fed. For the moment we will continue guarding the town and taking out the non-samurai when we can. Leave the better trained for last, we will need to capture them to get information and we don't need to worry about twenty extra thugs being sent to interrupt us.

"We will circle back around their camp to place ourselves between them and the town. If they send a raiding party we will deal with them but mostly I just want to observe what they do during the day. The town would no longer exist if all these samurai had attacked seriously at once so they must be doing something that takes up the attention of the majority of their forces." The genin nodded and moved out once again to track around the edges of camp to get back to the mouth of the valley that rested between the samurai and Fukutoshi.

-- break --

It was midmorning before any real action was seen. A samurai who was getting on towards the end of his usefulness as a warrior, around 50 years old was Naruto's guess, emerged from one of the largest tents on the field bellowing orders. Men who had previously been caring for their armor, swords, weapons, making food, and other make-work leapt to their feet and began rushing around. The head samurai, who Naruto dubbed Sotaichou, walked through the camp towards the ninja and the town behind them pointing at people seemingly at random. Everyone he pointed at disappeared into a nearby tent and emerged donning armor and weapons and began moving towards the entrance to the valley. With a strike force of ten gathered at the head of the valley and mounting horses he began leading the other men back towards a very steep section of the hill to the south and revealed a rockslide to be a mine by rolling aside a boulder to show a tunnel leading into the hill.

Kakashi turned to the genin to give them their orders. "The strike force is all bandits. The leader might have some samurai training it wouldn't be a far possibility for Sotaichou to be training his strike leaders a little to get better results. If you can try to take the leader alive, he might know something, but the rest are just grunts that in this for their own gain. I'm going to be learning what I can about what's down that tunnel. When you finish with the bandits return to the town and report to Asuma about what you've seen and where I've gone. If I don't return by tonight he'll give you your orders. Understood?" asked Kakashi.

"Hai, sensei" the genin chorused.

--

The genin fell back to a position that had seen obvious frequent usage and waited for the bandits to show up. Naruto immediately faded into the shadows like he were merging with them silencing even his bells as he went to set traps. Sakura moved to a tree branch that stood about chest height to an adult riding a horse and began digging out kunai in preparation to throw. She turned to Sasuke to give him some last minute advice.

"Try not to kill the horses if you can, they should be useful to the town if we can get them back. Make sure you kill your first one from a distance so if you freeze up you won't be in danger."

"Hn, like I would freeze up. Mind your own business Sakura." Sakura turned away from him before he could see the sneer on her face at his ego.

"She's just trying to help, teme." Naruto commented, emerging from the leaves above them. He turned to Sakura. "Do you want me on the other side of the trail to give some crossfire or would you be worried about hitting me?" he asked.

"No, stay on this side. We should fight as a group when we can to watch each other's backs. Naruto, you should take down the leader, those wire tricks you've been learning should help you do it without killing him."

"I'll need to be above him for those to work. I'll head back here once I've got him." Naruto was off into the shadows of the leaves again. Sasuke grumbled to himself about how the dobe was going to be doing the most important part. He would have to show these two idiots how superior he was to them by taking out more of the bandits.

Team 7 didn't have to wait long for the bandits to come thundering along the path towards the town. It was to the bandits' credit that they didn't yell or make any unnecessary noise, unfortunately that just made the screams seem that much louder in comparison.

The leader was riding at the head and suddenly he was jerked into the trees above him letting out a shrill scream before it abruptly cut off. The bandits riding behind them were stunned for a second and the first two blundered into the first trap without even noticing it, not that they could have anyway. The third bandit had just moments to look stunned before the, now bloodied, wire stretched across the trail sliced cleanly through his neck as well.

The bandits panicked. Without their leader to urge them on and with three of their number decapitated before they could stop the rest of the bandits turned their mounts to retreat where they met flying kunai from Sakura thrown with enough force to pierce through their armor and throw them from their horses.

--

Sasuke and, to an extent, Sakura watched in captivated horror as the first three bandits' heads went tumbling through the air accompanied by the pulsing squirt of blood from the portion of their necks that was still attached to the bodies that were still mounted on their horses. Sasuke turned and wretched as he had flashbacks to the Uchiha massacre, he turned back just in time to see Sakura throw three kunai which managed to unseat the bandits they killed. He managed to pull himself together enough to hurl a single shuriken into the throat of a retreating bandit.

It was just like throwing at a wooden target back in the Uchiha personal training grounds, he checked for wind, he adjusted for movement of the target, he visualized where he wanted the projectile to go, and he snapped his wrist out towards it. The spinning star left his hand in a blur and unerringly found its home in the neck of the bandit. Sasuke watched the light leave the eyes of the bandit as waves of red blood pulsed out of his neck. It all seemed to happen in slow motion. The bandit slumped backwards and after several steps from the horse was bounced off the back of the animal. The horse seemed almost confused like it didn't understand why its rider would just leave it like that, so it stopped and turned back for the man nudging the dead body with its nose.

--

Sakura and Naruto stopped collecting their weapons and looked with concern at Sasuke, sure he was a jerk but his first kill seemed to have been a big shock to him. After Sasuke had thrown his shuriken Naruto had taken out the other fleeing bandits with the wires he kept wrapped around his forearms, using them like nooses wrapping them around their necks and letting them cut their own heads off as they ran away. Sasuke however had stayed staring at the man he had killed for probably ten minutes now and there was only so much make-work that Sakura and he could come up with to do to give their teammate time to deal with the emotional backlash of his first kill.

The had already retrieved their weapons and when Sasuke still looked to be shocked they had rounded up all the horses and tethered them to a tree. When Sasuke still looked shocked, he had suggested that they strip the bandits of their armor and weapons along with anything else of value they could find. They were getting close to finishing that up now and Sasuke still looked dead to the world around him. There was nothing else for it. Naruto sighed, he was the poster child for mental fuck up there was no way he could possibly be qualified to give psychological advice to his teammate. In lieu of a better person he stepped up anyway.

"Hey, Sasuke? Hey. Hey, Sasuke… Hey, teme!" yelled Naruto. That got his attention. Sasuke jerked his gaze to Naruto and the blonde saw the pain and anguish hidden behind the arrogant ebony eyes. _Well fuck, now what am I going to do? I can't just leave him out to hang. I can't count the number of times I've wanted someone to be there for me, I'd be a real bastard if I ignored other's pain._ "Sasuke, you want to talk about it?" asked Naruto. Sasuke looked like he wanted to shake his head no but that little voice inside everyone that they ignore until they're totally broken chose this time to assert itself inside the tormented youth and forced a subdued "Yes" out of the dark-haired Uchiha.

--

Sakura was shocked beyond belief that Naruto was talking to Sasuke about his first kill. Even more so that he was talking with compassion like he had talked with her. But even more than _that_, he was listening as Sasuke was verbally vomiting all his life's problems at the blonde. She could hear them talking about the Uchiha massacre and even life before that with Itachi getting all their father's approval and even what it was like with the pressures of being a kid in a noble clan. Eventually Sakura just stopped what she was going and sat down next to Naruto as Sasuke rambled on and on.

Eventually Sasuke trailed off and sat drooped almost as if he had no more strength left. From a medic's point of view he might not with all the adrenalin released both in the fight and by telling Naruto all his secrets and then the come down off of that high must be exhausting. But even as Sasuke fainted right there he seemed to be lighter than he'd ever been. It wasn't something that you could easily pick up and the pink-haired kunoichi doubted that much would change between the three of them but she would bet that Sasuke would make at least a token gesture to be nicer to them than he ever was to anyone else.

Now that she thought about it, Naruto might have been waiting for this or something like it to break Sasuke down so he could rebuild the Uchiha into a functioning shinobi. She had noticed that Naruto tended to break people before forging their broken pieces back together even better than they were before. He had waited until her spirit had broken at not being able to entice Sasuke like he could in his female form and then with her emotional trouble after breaking that bandit's neck in Wave. Now she was proud of herself and even more so of whom she was becoming. He did so with Ino when he broke her using Ino's love for her and the blonde kunoichi's self-hate over an imagined taboo. Sakura couldn't wait to see what Naruto might be able to make with the admittedly better quality base material the Uchiha represented. _The pieces are much smaller now though so the forging process will be much longer this time_ she thought.

--

Naruto hefted Sasuke's unconscious form over the horse the bandit he had killed had formerly owned. He sighed again, possibly his tenth in the last minute. Sasuke was fucked up. Of that there was no doubt. The only question that remained was whether or not to tell anyone about it and get him taken off duty to be psychiatrically evaluated before treatment or possibly even forced retirement or to try to rebuild the Uchiha himself. He had no doubt that he couldn't just tell the doctors at the hospital that his teammate was in desperate need of psychiatric help, they would tell him to stop lying and kick him out the door. The only way to foist this problem off on someone qualified to handle it would be to go to the Hokage or somehow set it up so that an unbiased instructor saw the problem.

The first option, though certain, would not do to use too often. If he kept going to the Hokage with problems he would become dependent on the old man. The second option was too unreliable. Everyone in Konoha saw the Uchiha survivor through rose tinted glasses and setting up a complex scenario in front of someone skilled in seeing through deception was just asking for trouble. His _only_ option really was to try to fix his teammate himself. _Well, Team 7 will, without a doubt, be the most fucked up Team ever seen in Konoha when we're done but I'll be damned if we aren't effective. Ha, ha, we'll probably end up like the Sannin but with deeper psychological scarring _Naruto chuckled to himself.

-- break --

The other Teams stared in slight shock seeing Team 7 coming into the town and then the courtyard of the inn with ten horses, two of them carrying bundled armor, one of them carrying bundles of weaponry and valuables, and one of them carrying a bound man sitting backwards on it.

Naruto was walking behind the horses driving them towards the inn as they sought to keep away from him. He had found that he smelled too much like a predator to get one of the beasts to let him ride it. Sakura and Sasuke were riding two horses, Sasuke having woken up halfway back to town; he had not said a word since waking up except for a quiet "thank you" which had startled the other two members with its sincerity so much that they had remained quiet on the way back afraid they would break the mood.

The rode into the stable and some of the members of the caravan moved quickly to unload the bundles, leaving the prisoner for the shinobi, and taking the saddles off the horses. Team 10 was chided back into their guard positions on top of the low wall surrounding the inn. Team 8 seemed stunned for a little while before Kurenai and Haku took over.

"Where is Kakashi?" asked Kurenai.

"He's checking out something at the camp. We need to report to Asuma eventually. What should we do with our prisoner? Kakashi-sensei told us to take him alive so we could get information but none of us are trained to do that." Naruto responded. He had walked in the gate and remained out of the stable so he wouldn't spook the horses. Haku looked at the still unconscious bandit for a moment before she pulled out two senbon and sent them flying into two pressure points on his neck.

"He will remain unconscious until someone removes those senbon. We can just put him in a room and lock it for now. When Kakashi-san gets back he can do with him as he will." Haku said. Kurenai nodded but frowned slightly.

"Haku-chan, you should wait for orders when the situation may be thought over and your commanding officer is present." Kurenai admonished gently. "That's not to say I don't value your initiative but perhaps next time just suggest such a course of action instead of going ahead with it."

"Gomen, I'll do that next time, Kurenai-san." Haku said with her head bowed.

Kurenai turned to Team 7 once more. "Are any of you injured?" The genin shook their heads. "Then come inside and get lunch from Hinata. I will relieve Asuma for a moment so that you may brief him on the situation with Kakashi." She walked off towards the smoking jonin after seeing the genin head inside.

-- break --

Team 7 was already eating like starving wolves when Asuma came in. The jonin-sensei of Team 10 gestured for Kiba, Shino, Haku, and Hinata to leave so that the briefing could start. Naruto was nearly finished so he decided that he would be the one to explain everything. After two last bites of rice Naruto set down his bowl and looked up at Asuma.

"So, what do you need to know?" he asked.

"Let's start with where Kakashi is and a brief summary of what you've all been doing today." Asuma said after some thought.

Naruto began describing what they had done that day and how Kakashi had decided to see what was in the mine. Asuma listened carefully throughout the entire narrative never stopping Naruto until he began describing the walk back to the town. The jonin settled back to think about the new developments. He would need to think about the importance of the mine later. Hopefully Kakashi would return with more information. In the meantime however he needed to deal with Team 7.

"Well it sounds like you did a good job. Do you two have anything to add?" he waited until they shook their heads no. "Well rest up I'm sure that when Kakashi gets back he'll have you back to work in no time. For the meantime I think that one of you should accompany Team 8 around the village as a guard of sorts and I'll rotate the other two into the watch over the merchants and workers in the caravan."

"I'll go help out Team 8." Naruto's and Sakura's jaws just about hit the table beneath them when they heard Sasuke volunteer. Asuma nodded in the affirmative and gave him directions to where Team 8 said they expected to be when they left after getting lunch for Team 7. The shell-shocked genin just sat there for a moment before Asuma reminded them that they had guarding to do after they had cleaned themselves off and tended to their weapons.

-- break --

Naruto was again forcibly reminded why he hated guarding anything. He'd only done it on the mission to Wave but he'd decided then that it was the devil's work. Guarding basically meant sitting still and paying attention to nothing while you worked yourself up into a near breakdown at the stress of waiting for something bad to happen that you knew would but probably would not for a long time. And so five genin stood around the inn watching for bandits that Naruto was sure weren't going to come before they moved to different locations throughout the center of town.

They looked for bandits while at the blacksmith's shop straining their ears to hear the sound of horses carrying raiders over the constant clanking and dinging of hammers as the two blacksmiths that the caravan had brought helped the local blacksmith begin forging all the little parts that they needed to restore the town. Then they looked for bandits at the carpenter's shop as they tried to ignore the steady rasp of saws and planers as the five carpenters the caravan brought began working with the local carpenter and his apprentice to begin preparing boards with which to fix the broken houses. Finally when they thought them might be done they went back to the inn and looked for bandits as they ignored the murmuring of the town's elders as they discussed what should be fixed first and when that would be done and endless discussion about how much the company would fix or wouldn't fix.

Naruto nearly shouted for joy when he saw Kakashi come back, although he managed to restrain that emotion, it wouldn't do for his bastard of a sensei to get the impression that he was liked after all. Naruto eagerly awaited the call that would come that meant he was done guarding. Unfortunately Kakashi's arrival signaled something totally different. The silver-haired jonin ordered all of the genin and Haku on watch and took the jonin into the cellar of the inn to discuss what he'd found.

Apparently whatever he'd found was very important indeed judging by the somber expressions on the jonin when they emerged. Team 7 frowned in thought. They had seen such expression on their sensei's face before, right after the demon brothers had shown up and complicated a simple C-rank mission. Already Sakura, Sasuke, and Naruto knew that the mission had just become FUBAR.

The jonin immediately called their troops to meet with them. Team 7 followed Kakashi over to a dark corner of the courtyard and seated themselves around him.

"It's all gone wrong again hasn't it?" asked Sakura.

"That's a fairly accurate description even if it lacks detail. The mine is not a mine, it's a prison. In that prison are slaves and captured shinobi. From what I saw they are mostly civilian slaves but there is a fair distribution of ninja who escaped the bloodline purges in Kiri. Sotaichou is a former Kumo samurai who has been collecting slaves and prisoners with bloodlines in order to sell them to the shinobi countries. He's been here for years but judging from what I saw the rice crop failed last year forcing them to eat even the seed. Now they need to steal from the town to keep themselves from starving. He tried to make it look like a minor bandit problem but the only town within striking distance is a town important enough to hire ninja. Including the guards of the prison there are 100 samurai and an additional fifty-six bandits who are mostly untrained." Kakashi rattled out dispassionately.

"I don't understand, he can't sell ninja with questionable loyalties to other countries." Naruto pointed out.

"He isn't. He's allowing his highest ranking and strongest samurai to rape the women in order to get them pregnant. I don't know what he's doing with the men but I assume it's of similar purpose to produce bloodline carrying offspring. Most of the civilian slaves are very young, probably the results of past rapes. He'll sell the children who have no loyalty to any village and let the buyers train them as ninja themselves."

Naruto and Sakura frowned deeply at this. "So when are we going in?" asked Naruto.

"Tomorrow." The genin were shocked they had expected to have to convince their sensei. "Tomorrow night we will be infiltrating the prison with Team 8 and Haku leaving Team 10 to guard the town. We know that Sotaichou only sends mostly untrained bandits into the town so the three of them should be able to handle it. Asuma is here if it gets tough. We will be moving in to provide the former ninja with food and medical care as much as we can so they can assist in the fight. Once we have freed them it is only a matter of fighting our way out. The new objective here is to secure that prison."

"Obviously you hope that they will join Konoha, if not to continue as a ninja at least to lend their strength through their bloodline." Sasuke snorted.

"I'll not deny that that is a very appealing possibility, but, even at worst, our success will deny other countries and advantage that they might have gained through this operation."

"Why here though?" asked Naruto. "Of all the places they could have hidden themselves why here?"

"I would guess it's our hands off approach to governing that made this location so appealing. More so than any other ninja country we allow our civilians freedom to do as they wish. If you couple that with the land's plentiful resources and the country's reputation that would by itself deny the possibility of a slavery ring and you have the makings of a very effective cover. Our reputation for strength would also discourage unsatisfied buyers from mobilizing in force to express their displeasure. Because of our stand on slavery Konoha would never be a customer so any force that mobilized would be mistakenly viewed as an aggressive attack on our soil and possibly incite another war." Kakashi explained. Naruto nodded as this made sense. In the end however this just meant that not only were these men doing something evil but they were using Konoha as their pawn and that was unforgivable as well.

"Get a good night's rest and see to your weapons. Sasuke, have you dealt with your first kill?" asked Kakashi. Sasuke nodded. "Good, we will be terminating with extreme prejudice tomorrow so it's good to know you won't freeze. When you can, look out for Team 8 in case they get into trouble. As little experience as you have you are still the veterans here and it is up to the experienced to make sure the inexperienced live long enough to become experienced. Dismissed."

-- break --

Team 7 was awake before dawn and seeing to their weapons at the breakfast table. It underscored the seriousness of the mission to a slightly sleepy and bewildered Team 8. There was something very sobering about watching their comrades sharpening and polishing kunai with blank faces or checking ninja wire for damage that might cause it to break or seeing them run through different handseals in combinations as fast as they could while mumbling technique names under their breath.

Team 8 noticed a strange tension at the table. They didn't know what it was yet but they knew it had to do with the emptiness in Team 7's eyes. They didn't talk about it but if one were to describe it they might say that it was like looking at a dead person's eyes. There was nothing there. No emotion, no spark, no ideas, no thoughts, there was nothing there to mark them as alive besides the steady and slow breathing.

Sakura put away her kunai into her thigh pouches and smiled brightly at the genin across the table from her. Naruto reached the end of the wire he was checking and rewound it around his left forearm before he dove into his, till now, untouched breakfast with gusto. Sasuke finished the combination he was on before he acknowledged the other ninja with a grunt.

Haku smiled softly back at Sakura but she was the only one to respond beyond the genin mechanically eating the breakfast in front of them. Kurenai came into the room and sat at the side of the table with Team 7 and looked over her genin. It was true that their stated mission of reconstruction was more closely related to what they were about to do than Team 10's mission of guarding but that didn't make her feel any better about sending her genin in to possible kill or be killed. Kakashi walked into the room and sat at the head of the table before inquiring if his Team was ready.

"We will be moving out after you all finish. We will move up the valley to the bandit camp and then enter the tunnel to the prison behind the group of samurai who usually makes camp outside. We will have cooked rice balls and water canteens sealed in scrolls to give to the ninja we see. Kurenai and I have soldier pills to give to those who are in the worst shape. Remember to wear your hitai-ite in clear view when you show yourselves to the former ninja, you will need to see their reaction to your loyalties. If they react aggressively to you because you're from Konoha we will have to leave them locked up until we have control of the prison and we figure out why they reacted the way they did. Remember also to clearly state you are helping them escape but that they must help fight the guards. We cannot expect to win against 100 samurai by ourselves; if we can't convince enough ninja we must abort this time and try again with a different plan." Kakashi said by way of a briefing. "The prison is a very large cavern with barred cells all along the outside with the guards' living facilities in a building built into the center of the cave. There are five floors of cells. We will be circling around making sure to look into all the cells without getting spotted by a guard. Team 7 will start from the top down; Team 8 will begin from the bottom. When we meet we will begin the assault."

The genin nodded at the plan. The members of Team 7 were eagerly thinking bloodthirsty thoughts of justice brought down on the heads of the guards with kunai and jutsu. The members of Team 8 were just hoping that they might come out of this alive; really, nine people against 100 were insane odds.

-- break --

The journey to the bandit camp was mostly uneventful except for a short skirmish between Team 7 and two bandits sent to find out what had happened to the squad of ten sent the day before. Team 8 looked decidedly pale after seeing Naruto rush forward in a blur of speed and calmly slit their throats allowing them to drop to the ground gurgling like marionettes with their strings cut. Naruto frowned deeply and his eyes betrayed some inner turmoil before he shook his head returning them to their former expressionless icy blue.

"It never gets any easier does it?" asked Naruto.

"Nope, you know you've been doing it too long and it's time to quit if it ever stops bothering you." Kakashi added.

The journey didn't take but a minute after their short interruption. As a result, Team 8 was still slightly off-kilter at the apparent ease that Naruto had displayed in killing someone. Hinata was the first to recover assuring herself that if Kurenai and Kakashi had both killed in service to the village and she felt safe around them why should she not feel safe around someone she trusted infinitely more and for much longer? She reasoned that if she couldn't trust Naruto after seeing him kill she couldn't trust anyone who had killed; because she still trusted Kurenai in her fashion she could therefore trust Naruto to not kill them all. She chose to conveniently ignore the huge logical fallacy in her argument. Shino looked at it from a far less emotional standpoint. Since Naruto had killed before and he had been cleared afterwards to continue as a shinobi then there was no evidence to support him attacking his allies and the possibility that the psychological department that dealt with shinobi had made a mistake was too small to worry seriously about. He needed all his concentration to get through the mission; he could spare none for worrying. Kiba allowed his emotions to calm him. If Hinata and Shino were still calm and willing to work with the fox boy there was no reason for him to worry. He trusted that his teammates would know of a betrayal long before he would and they would inform him of it before it happened.

The camp was already moving back into the entrance of the prison when the two shinobi teams arrived so there was no time to worry or fret about the coming infiltration. They followed swiftly through the entrance mentally clutching their chakra as close to themselves as possible in an effort to fool any unseen security seals or traps. Kakashi led the team while Kurenai took up the rear of their formation. Team 7 split in half with Sasuke sticking close to Kakashi while Naruto and Sakura let themselves fall back among Team 8 to reassure them and be ready to protect them if their entrance went south and they had to come in fighting.

The ninja entered the main room before they were ready for it and the sudden end to the tunnel took them by surprise. The Teams split up and each took one side of the tunnel. Kakashi made some quick hand signs to Kurenai who seemed to understand them when she nodded and took her team off to the left heading away from the metal stairs that Team 7 had crouched under.

--

Naruto wondered at the design of this prison. Wouldn't the samurai have been better off constructing the stairs in the middle of the levels to force any escapees to traverse the entire length of the cavern before gaining freedom? It would be helpful to them certainly but now that they were in hostile territory he was looking deeply into everything that could represent a trap. Even with samurai's reputation for being very straightforward it was paramount that he look to his own safety first and then to look to Sakura's safety. Kakashi could take care of himself and as callous as it was Naruto still wasn't convinced that Sasuke was worth the effort, both to save him in the immediate and to fix him for the future.

The crept quietly up the steps checking for creaks, squeaks, clanks, rattling or any other noises that might give them or Team 8 away when moving along them. Soon they reached the fifth and final floor and only then did Naruto allow himself to see the inmates. They were a pitiful bunch, obvious signs of starvation nearly screamed at him. These prisoners on this level were the former shinobi. Several of them stood to fight as soon as they saw the new arrivals but most remained in a meditative position in what Naruto assumed would be an attempt to gather enough chakra for a jutsu. Kakashi did several hand signs that the genin recognized as "split up, work separately" and they pulled sealing scrolls out of their equipment pouches and moved silently over to a cell each.

Naruto chose the cell of a huge man who he gathered had a bloodline if his blue skin was an indication. Naruto motioned him to come closer to the bars. The man calmly moved forward but tensed upon seeing Naruto's Konoha hitai-ite.

"Calm down big man. We're here to get you out and if you try to hurt me we're not gonna let you fight. I've got food and water here but the deal is that you have to work for them. I need a very strong promise from you that you're not going to do anything stupid when I let you out. Some examples being: going after the guards before we say so, attacking me, making noise, etc. you know the drill I'm sure. If you're a ninjutsu specialist my sensei has some soldier pills but we'd like to save those for the ninja who can't be expected to fight well without chakra to burn. You look like a nice type of guy to me but I'll slit your throat if you do anything stupid."

"If you can get me outta here and give me the chance to kill some of these guards, you have my loyalty. My name is Hoshigaki Sakana. What's yours?" he asked. Naruto arched an eyebrow at the introduction. He took in the blue skin, shark-like teeth, and the three slash marks running vertically on his cheeks; then he nodded. If the guy was named 'fish' who was he to argue? He looked like one.

"Name's Naruto." Naruto picked the lock on the cell and wiped the hinges with a greasy rag to silence them before he pulled open the cell door. Sakana stepped out and Naruto looked up… and up… and up at him. He guessed that the blue-skinned man was topping 240 centimeters; he had to stoop to stand on the walkway so he wouldn't bang his head. If the rest of the ninja were anything like this there was no reason to keep the stairs at the back of the cavern, there was simply no way you could miss seeing something that big walk out. "You prefer kunai or fists? You look like you usually use something significantly bigger but that's what I've got to offer." Naruto said as he unsealed four rice balls and a canteen of water. He looked up to see Sakana shake his head at the offer of two kunai. "Remember to eat and drink slowly or you're gonna get sick and useless." With that parting advice Naruto moved off to the next unattended cell. He nearly chuckled to himself at how Sasuke's usual social skills were setting him back while Sakura's old habits of being a gossip who needed to talk quickly were allowing her to move at a much greater pace.

--

Kurenai, Haku and Team 8 were slightly unsure of what to do. The entire lower level was made up of children who were barely old enough to take care of themselves and thus liabilities in combat. It was obvious that most of them possessed active bloodlines but had absolutely no training in how to use them. As such the random chakra surges that untrained emotional outbursts produced had drastically changed some of them. There were at least two Kaguya children whose unrestrained chakra pulses had caused bones to grow but hadn't reverted back. The dilemma arose from the possibility that the guards would take the children hostage in an attempt to get the ninja to hesitate. While it was assumed that these were all rape children, they remained possibly useful to Konoha and there might be those among the ninja who would indeed hesitate. So the question became: whether or not to release them and if they did what to do with them.

Kurenai eventually decided that the best option would be to take them out of the battle and deny them to the guards as well. That meant blocking the cells with something that would prevent the guards opening them. She motioned Haku and her team over to demonstrate what she wanted done.

"Can you freeze the inside of the lock solid so that they can't open the cells even if they want to?" she asked Haku in a whisper. It was a credit to Haku that she had already thought of the possibility of the children used as hostages by the guards and she smiled inwardly at the competence of her erstwhile jonin-sensei. She nodded to answer the question. "How long will it hold? Will it decrease your effectiveness significantly?"

"No and no. It will be of negligible chakra drain to do it and the ice should last several hours in this temperature without melting enough to free the mechanism."

"Then freeze all the locks closed as we pass them. I'll let you know when we need to start letting them out." Kurenai motioned Hinata over. "I need you to keep a lookout for guards as we move along. Alert Shino if you see one and have him take them out quietly." Hinata nodded and Shino started releasing his kikai bugs. Haku placed her hand against the lock and moments later removed it to display the keyhole filled with ice and the metal surrounding it lightly covered in frost. Kurenai motioned for them to continue.

-- break --

Kakashi and Team 7 had cleared the upper level and were now trailing thirty-one emaciated, revenge-driven shinobi. Kakashi wasn't thrilled with the idea that the ninja were following them but he hadn't been able to come up with a good reason to leave them on the top level and then call for them. Indeed with the recent revisions to the plan that had become necessary after some better intelligence about the facility the ninja following them were right where they were supposed to be, or at least heading there.

They had discovered that not all the cells in the prison were filled, not even close actually. The floors were rated by threat level. This meant that all the shinobi were kept on the top level and the less dangerous prisoners were kept below them in order of decreasing menace to the guards. This made recruiting very easy but it also made their whole exit strategy trash. Now the plan was to attack straight into the guards' facilities with the ninja they had collected and either kill them all, subdue them all, or get them to run away so the shinobi would have control of the prison. Now they were sneaking down the levels looking for any likely support that wouldn't likely get themselves killed while they rendezvoused with Kurenai, Haku, and Team 8. They spotted them halfway through the second level and Naruto sprinted silently over to them to inform them of the plan change.

Kakashi had been duly impressed with the stealth that Naruto was capable of using. Even with his hair festooned in bells and metal plated wooden geta on his feet he was still capable of sprinting totally silently. Actually if he had cared to take a poll among the ninja at his back he would have discovered that only three ninja would have guessed him capable of that feat and two of them were his students who had already witnessed something similar to it (the other had simply decided to return the courtesy of not being shocked by his unorthodox appearance and deliberately decided to not be shocked by the belled shinobi, after all anyone who didn't make the obvious comment or appear to be startled by meeting a giant blue man with sharp teeth and gills had to be something of an oddity himself).

Naruto soon returned at a more sedate pace with Team 8, Kurenai, and Haku in tow. Kurenai looked at the ninja following Kakashi cursorily to judge their readiness before turning to the other Konoha jonin and asking about the plan using the sign language taught to ANBU. Haku starred in shock at one woman in the middle of the group. Naruto intercepted her before she could move closer to the kunoichi she obviously knew and checked her with a terse "Later, Haku-chan" to keep her head in the present. She shook her head in response and went to move closer but Naruto grabbed her by the chin and forced her to look at Hinata.

"You are here because Hinata is here and if you let her die because you can't keep your mind on the job I swear to Kami that I'll finish the job I started in Wave. You may ask Hinata after this is done if you may talk to whoever you recognize but now is not the time or place." Naruto hissed into her ear viciously. He waited until Haku attempted to nod before he released her chin and stepped back to his Team. Hinata had noticed the byplay and looked to Haku until she shook her head as if to say "later".

--

Sakura had also noticed the short interaction but she knew that Naruto would tell her later if it was important.

Sakura resumed looking amongst the liberated ninja to find any obvious injury that she could treat or anything that she may do something to allow the ninja to function better and improve the odds. Most of the ninja were chunin but she was sure that five or ten of them had been jonin, she only worried that being so long out of practice and so weak from the constant borderline starvation and the repeated pregnancies for the women would take their tolls on the ninjas' skills. She returned her focus to Kakashi when he started to lay out a plan for the invasion.

-- break --

Naruto waited with the five ninja assigned to him out on the left flank of Kakashi's hastily constructed formation.

The plan was something Naruto thought was worthy of him. Basically it consisted of: charge up the middle of the cavern making lots of noise and slinging around big jutsu in an effort to bring out all the samurai to fight. While that was happening Sakura, Haku, Hinata, Shino and Kurenai along with ten shinobi would sneak into the prison barracks through the back and begin silently going through incapacitating or killing the samurai from behind. Any idiot would see through it but the idea was to surprise the guards with a worst-case scenario and remove most of their fighting capabilities from them in a quick swoop so they could separate and isolate the remaining resistance to more safely engage them.

Of the thirty-one ninjas, ten still possessed the stealth skills required for the assassination portion of the assault. The other twenty-one had been divided by combat readiness and former rank into three groups of five and one group of six. Kakashi was leading the group of six at the vanguard of a basic diamond formation the five next best were led by Sasuke on the right side, the five next best were led by Naruto on the left, and the five determined to be least ready by virtue of skill or chakra levels were being led by Kiba in the rear.

Kiba was not happy about this arrangement but Kakashi had explained that as Naruto was a chakra tank with nearly 100 kills he could easily lead the left flank despite its overall chakra shortage and heavy emphasis on ninjutsu users. Sasuke had less kills (one made yesterday) but that would be offset by his complement of generally more skilled ninja who were predominately taijutsu users and could fight longer and on more even footing with the samurai than the other ninja. Thus, that logically left the least experienced genin leading the weakest squad of ninja in the position of the formation best suited to support with the least risk of direct fighting.

While he was waiting Naruto examined the building in front of them. The entire cavern that they were in was roughly circular about 200 meters across. The barracks was situated in the center of the cavern. It looked like it had been a cluster of stalagmites to begin with and the original builders had laid rock walls linking the larger standing pillars. It was set up like a hexagon with a rectangle building inside it. There was only one door in the low wall and it was large enough to fit five horses side by side through it without the riders' knees touching. Just inside the walls was a courtyard that wrapped around the square building inside in a 'U' shape. After crossing the fifty meter yard they would run into the guard building. The building butted up against the back wall of the hexagon and had three doors but no windows by virtue of there being no sky. Naruto smiled slightly at that. If there were no windows there would be no need to worry about arrows. The samurai would need to come out of one of three choke points to attack the ninjas. He was beginning to get the feeling that they might survive this.

Now all that remained was to wait for the signal from Kurenai that the assassins were in position.

The light flashed long, short, long, short, long. It was time.


	11. Chapter 10

Naruto surged forward with a yell. Sakana, the only taijutsu specialist in Naruto's group, followed on the blonde's heals with his own hoarse roar. Naruto's blood was pounding in his ears like war drums and he unconsciously dropped the genjutsu that covered him. He raced up to the wall separating the guard area and leapt over it directly into the parade area inside. He landed and saw that he and the five others he brought with him were surrounded. Some enterprising Fukutaichou had been running his platoon through drills and sparring.

Naruto grinned; maybe there was someone here who could offer him a glorious fight. He longed for another fight like the one he'd had with Haku where death walked alongside you waiting with baited rotting breath for you to make a mistake or finally succeed in killing your opponent. His bloodlust rose as he faced the enemy and he could dimly hear the sweet siren song of combat that would prove his strength to these mere mortals. He realized that the Kyuubi was starting to rear its head to influence him and he shoved back the feeling of superiority and dominance ruthlessly.

Naruto's hands blurred through handseals before he took a deep breath and blasted ten samurai with his modified Kaze: Daitoppa and their shredded bodies were tossed across the field before spattering noisily against the barracks. Idly he noticed a huge flare of fire from the right and heard the sudden screaming of badly burnt men. He tossed that observation aside in favor of unleashing more of his powerful wind jutsu. The samurai were surprised but their Fukutaichou rallied them together and the remaining fifteen men split into groups of three and moved to attack one shinobi per group. Naruto spared only a moment to see that his shinobi could handle the much reduced threat before he began attacking targets of opportunity.

Naruto threw out his hands allowing the wires wound around his forearms to unravel. He poured chakra through them animating them in ways that would make a Suna puppeteer jealous.

He saw a samurai who was about to cut one of the ninja down and the wires reached out under the armor to stab through him. He scoffed disappointedly when the samurai failed to dodge the fairly slow attack and he threw up blood before keeling over dead.

He spun dodging a chop from another samurai. Naruto smiled as his first wire attack was swiped aside but the smile faded as his second attack ripped out the samurai's throat. Naruto looked around. It appeared that the vastly superior skill that the ninja had was telling. There were only five samurai left fighting mostly alone and separated. The Fukutaichou was still alive and Naruto saw him connect with a shallow slice across the chest of one of his ninja.

Naruto jumped forward to continue the fight using chakra to wrap his wires around his forearms even as he unsheathed his tantos. The twin blades glinted in the torchlight that served to illuminate the whole chamber as Naruto brought them to a ready position. He faced the officer and at an unspoken signal they both attacked.

Lunge. Parry. Slash.

Sidestep around. Opening there! Step in, kick aside the sword with geta.

Flip knife to normal grip. Stab.

End.

"Well that was kinda pathetic." Naruto said as he looked at the Fukutaichou. "I hope he wasn't the best they had." He heard the ninja behind him chuckle lightly. Naruto walked across the yard towards the door they had been assigned. He had seen it open when they had jumped in but now it was closed. Apparently they thought they could just wait them out? No, that couldn't be right. They were regrouping? "Well it looks like they locked us out boys. Maybe we should knock politely?" asked Naruto eliciting laughter.

One string of handseals later and the heavy wooden door exploded inwards in a hail of sharp wooden shards, splinters, and razor wind blades borne on the wings of a gale-force wind.

--

Sasuke was nervous. He saw the signal and even watched Naruto start his charge but he was still hesitant to move. As he heard the roars of the ninja with Naruto and Kakashi though, he waved his ninja forward and ran towards the section of wall they had been assigned.

It was a short hop for a ninja to clear the wall and immediately all Sasuke's worry left him. There was nothing to second-guess about now. There were several samurai standing around startled by the sudden entrance of shinobi into their training grounds. They reacted well, or at least as well as samurai wielding boken can react. The wooden swords used in sparring did nothing to protect them from the fireball that flew from Sasuke's mouth. He was slightly startled as he didn't even remember starting to form handseals.

Soon the fight was over as the burned samurai and the two lucky ones who hadn't caught a bit of the destructive jutsu's wrath were put down like unskilled animals. Sasuke moved forward again with the men following him. He heard some laughing from across the courtyard before the sound of intense wind and shattering wood. He shook his head at what was so obviously Naruto's work. Kakashi probably could not give an order Naruto was more willing to follow than to be destructive while drawing attention.

--

Kakashi was leading his group of shinobi like he used to lead his ANBU team. They went quickly and silently through the door and were among the dozen samurai before they had a chance to yell for help. As soon as the skirmish had started Kakashi remembered that they had to draw attention for the plan to work. This went against his instincts but he considered himself a good shinobi and followed orders regardless, even if they were his own.

He saw that all the opponents had been killed and now it was time to storm the barracks itself. He noticed that there were several samurai moving to close the doors. They couldn't have that. He flashed through twenty handseals.

"Katon: Karyuu Endan" he yelled. The dragon that flew from his mouth flashed forward in a roaring inferno that smashed into the gates and their guards roasting them even as the pressure crushed them.

Before he moved into the barracks Kakashi looked around at the bodies lying in the courtyard. His team had killed twelve, Sasuke's team had killed five, and Naruto's team had somehow managed to kill thirty-one. That was a total of forty-eight which left another estimated fifty-two samurai and the remaining fifty-four bandits. Their first strike strategy had worked well so far. Now it was up to the pairs of infiltrating shinobi to make sure the odds were more even. The could count on the hallways lowering the effectiveness of the samurai by clustering them, only allowing one to attack at a time, and reducing the distance they could swing their swords.

Kakashi moved inside, stepping over the body of a shinobi who hadn't ducked fast enough and had received a slash across his throat.

--

Naruto grabbed the shirt of the kunoichi who had tried to step through the shattered door and yanked her back just in time for her to miss the chop that could have taken her head off.

"You should be more careful. Next time you come to a door you might try this." Naruto lashed out with his wires at the edges of the door even as he somersaulted through the open doorway. He came to his feet inside and twirled bringing his right tanto slicing through the neck of the samurai who had stayed back to deal with the shinobi who came through the door carelessly. Naruto watched impassively as the samurai fell to his knees and gripped his throat in a desperate attempt to stop the blood flow. "We all stick together. Look out for each other; freedom isn't much good if you're dead."

The ninja around him nodded and they moved off down the hall with Naruto in the lead, geta clacking and bells singing a delightful song of impending death as he walked.

His team continued down the hallway until they got to several doors. Naruto motioned for them to line up along the same wall the doors were on. He whispered to them that they should fire their jutsu diagonally through the doors after they opened but to wait for a retaliation strike before they exposed themselves to attack.

Naruto and Sakana kicked the doors in sending them flying back into what was immediately recognizable as a dinning area or meeting room. The two ninja who preformed the breach spun out of the way of any strikes incoming just in time to avoid the half-a-dozen arrows which poured out of the doors. The kunoichi who had nearly had her head removed earlier was quick to form several handseals before turning the wall at her back to deadly flying stone shrapnel at twin palm blows. The rocks that had originally made up the wall ripped two samurai who were hiding next to the door into bloody chunks before they continued across the room to kill three of the eight archers at the back of the room.

A different shinobi grabbed the arrows that were sticking out of the back wall and spun to face the recently widened door. He threw the arrows like ultra-long senbon before forming several handseals which surrounded them in visibly blue crackling electricity. The arrows almost by magic found the necks and chests of all the archers who they had come from and the impact discharged the gathered electricity through them frying their insides instantly.

Sakana, wanting his own share of the action, imitated the kunoichi by slamming his palms against the wall but without the advantage of an earth jutsu to help. The results were none-the-less spectacular as his hands unerringly found the heads of the samurai hiding behind the wall and he efficiently snapped their necks.

Naruto squinted through the dust and still tumbling debris to see if any doors existed on the other walls of the room. He bit back a curse when he noticed that there was indeed a door at the other end of the room. He couldn't afford to split up his force at every fork and he was hesitant to split his force at all. These shinobi had been out of action for a long time after all and it was his responsibility to get his team through this as safely as possible. He had no illusions that they wouldn't lose a single shinobi during this skirmish, they had probably already lost one even if not one of his, but he did intend to get through this whole thing with _his_ team all alive. He decided that Kakashi would be pushing hard to get deep into the building to keep the surprise and shock up so it didn't make sense to push forward too hard. He nodded, he had a plan now.

"Alright, listen up. I want Sakana to grab two swords and nail those doors at the other end of the room shut. We're gonna keep going down the outside hallway and try to flank them and provide reinforcements to our sneaky shinobi. I don't want to worry about anyone behind us though. Grab anything you think you can use from the bodies we're gonna be moving slower and more cautiously from here on out." Naruto ordered. All the ninja picked up a tanto from the dead for when they ran out of chakra and after seeing Sakana plunge a katana through the sliding doors and into the ground on the other side to keep them from opening, Naruto ushered them back into the hall to continue.

They moved off down the hall once more clearing every room they came to and jamming the doors in a similar manner until they reached the corner signifying the rear of the barracks. "Okay, now we move up to the second floor. We'll let the teme deal with the first. Our ninja are around here somewhere now so remember to look before you kill." Naruto led the swift but still silent rush up the stairs and into carnage.

--

Sasuke was decidedly out of his league. Each of the ninja backing him was better than he was while they were at full strength. Indeed the only reason that he was in charge was because he would be better able to predict the command decisions of his teammates and sensei. He knew that Naruto would be easy to track with the loud explosions and sounds of intense combat coming from him. He knew that Kakashi would push hard to get to the most powerful opponent and try to destroy the command structure. He also knew that Sakura would be completing her duty to assassinate the off balance samurai. He would be relegated to clean-up again. Not that that duty bothered him as much as it used to, an enemy was an enemy regardless of whether or not an ally had already killed most of his comrades.

He decided that since Kiba had never killed and he was leading a weaker squad it was up to him to take him under his wing. That meant combining their forces. "Find Kiba's team, we're linking up and clearing this floor of all the samurai before we move up." He got curt nods from his forces as they split into pairs and headed back towards the main entrance. Sasuke nodded, they would follow Kakashi's path of destruction up the middle with Kiba's team taking the left, the side already weakened courtesy of Naruto, and his team clearing out the right.

They found the dog-nin stalling just outside the entrance slightly dazed by the carnage around him. "Kiba! We're joining forces to clear the floors after Naruto and Kakashi-sensei move through them. We follow Kakashi's path up the middle, you take the left, I'll take the right." Sasuke shouted at him to bring the stunned shinobi back to the present. He received a sharp nod and the two teams moved into the building once more.

--

Naruto slowed out of shock at the shear amount of blood that was sprayed on the walls. It looked like someone had taken to painting in crimson but hadn't the patience to do it right. There were dead samurai everywhere. Some lay in the middle of the floor slashed open and slowly flooding the floor with blood. Others were leaned against the wall where they had hit after a particularly powerful blow. He knew these signs. Someone who had immense strength wielding a sword had done this. He only knew one kunoichi who was capable of this kind of damage.

"Sakura," he whispered. The two shinobi nearest to him looked at him in surprise. The little pink-haired girl had done this? Naruto motioned them forward again and began checking the doors to the rooms. They met little resistance as they moved through, usually just one or two samurai who had managed to get around the first wave of ninja and were attempting to flee.

They heard some clashing of steel up ahead and they raced towards the sound. Naruto burst through the door just in time to see Sakura shatter another samurai's sword with her a swing of her own. She continued the swing and appeared to deftly rip him in half with her sword. She spun towards the newest threat before she stopped at seeing the threat was led by Naruto. She stood there chest heaving clutching her purloined katana in a white knuckled grip. The katana was drenched with blood and so chipped and scratched it looked like it was serrated. Naruto thought that only her chakra reinforcing it was keeping it together at this point.

There were at least five dead samurai in the room all cut to pieces. It was apparent that Sakura had gotten progressively more brutal as she dispatched her opponents. Naruto shocked the ninja behind him and possibly Sakura herself when he felt his face stretch into a wide grin. He stepped forward still holding his bloody tantos. He hooked one around the back of her neck when he got within reach careful to use the blunt back edge to pull her towards him. He slammed his lips down on her and kissed her hard. She moaned slightly against him as she stepped forward and pressed herself against him wrapping her free arm around his neck as she returned the kiss for all she was worth.

Sakana shook off his shock first and broke them up with a small cough. The two genin broke apart still smiling rather scarily at the ninja in the doorway. Naruto gathered himself mentally and turned to his teammate.

"What is the situation in here?" he asked.

"There were two casualties, as far as I know, on our side. They knew we were going to attack from the back as soon as the original assault started so there wasn't any sneaking involved. We've been fighting since we got in. The higher-ups are on the top floor protected by archers at the top of the stairway. It's open on the top so nobody can climb it without getting an arrow in the face. Sotaichou has gathered the rest of his forces up at the top to make a last stand. Kakashi went to see if he could help all the other shinobi who were trying to find a way up. I was supposed to handle clean-up with three other assassination specialists." Sakura said before adding in a grumble: "I dunno why they picked me. I'm a melee/heavy-combat medic for Kami's sake."

Naruto smiled at her complaints. "Looks like we're gonna clean up here and then we're off to solve another problem for those ass-backwards senseis we brought with us." More chuckles from the five ninja he was leading rose in response to this statement. As his command moved off Naruto arched an eyebrow at the katana in Sakura's hand. She responded with a quiet "later" whispered into his ear.

Naruto ordered his ninja to split into two groups of three with Sakana as the leader of one and himself as the leader of the other. Sakana moved off with the two kunoichi in his group leaving Naruto with the remaining two shinobi and Sakura. Naruto took his group off to the door opposite the one his blue-skinned counterpart had moved through.

-- break --

They were beginning to wonder if everyone had been killed on this level after they had checked a dozen rooms to meet no live samurai. Of course right after such an observation they met with seven samurai headed by another Fukutaichou. Naruto grinned as he saw a chance for another good battle here.

"The Fukutaichou is mine!" he yelled as he rushed forward.

--

The shinobi who had hurled the arrows earlier to great effect formed twenty handseals before thrusting his hands forward pointing at two different samurai with his middle and index fingers. Lightening leapt from his extended fingers to strike both samurai blasting them back into the wall behind them, the impact swallowed up by the blast of thunder accompanying the bolts.

--

The other shinobi who hadn't really distinguished himself at all to this point formed three handseals and launched a spike made of water from his mouth before following it towards his targeted samurai brandishing his stolen tanto. The samurai dodged the missile only to find the shinobi inside his guard. The shinobi didn't waste any time at all in stabbing the samurai and killing him.

--

Sakura rushed into the room pausing only to see the results of the lightening jutsu and to check which samurai the other shinobi had chosen to target before she jumped towards the remaining three samurai. She brandished her sword and barely remembered to strengthen the blade before she met the strike of one samurai with a downward chop of her own. Sakura was using only her physical strength unaccompanied by chakra in an effort to conserve her reserves and to have a trick in case she met someone she couldn't handle. Her muscles alone provided more than enough power for her purposes though. The samurai's sword was batted aside as if it weren't even there and Sakura's chop continued downward to chew through his armor and leave him bleeding fatally from the lower chest and stomach. Sakura spun to intercept a cross cut from another samurai and she stepped forward into his guard while directing his sword away to crush his skull with a punch. She twirled again to meet the attacker she expected to find behind her only to see the very man she was looking for drop dead revealing the water-user standing behind him with a bloody tanto held like a kunai. She grinned slightly in appreciation of the assistance.

--

Naruto charged the Fukutaichou even as the Raiton jutsu went off behind him. He didn't need to look to know that someone had died from it. He brandished his two tantos held blade out, point down in his hands as he closed with the samurai. He fell once more into the half trance that he assumed when he fought. In this state he was hyper-aware of what was going on around him but he felt detached from it. He only experienced the opponent in front of him and the surging bloodlust that was his granted from the Kyuubi. He sidestepped the first chop and moved to slash his knife along the samurai's ribs.

The katana came arcing up to remove his arms even as the samurai spun with Naruto's motion. Naruto leapt up back flipping and twisting to come down on his feet facing his opponent. His eyes narrowed as he saw the calm look in the samurai's eyes. Apparently this would be a hard-won victory. He darted forward already tracking the katana's movement as the samurai held it above his left shoulder slanting across his front with the tip stopping in front of his right hip to guard from a stab. Naruto clashed with his right hand blade and rolled his body with his momentum towards the katana's hilt and lashed out in a fierce stab at the samurai's unprotected back. The Fukutaichou stepped forward to move himself out of the stabbing range and pushed the tanto holding his blade away. He continued the push into a slash that Naruto ducked and momentarily retreated from.

The samurai lowered his blade so he was holding it next to his left hip with the blade parallel to the ground and his right foot forward. Not intending to give Naruto his respite he lunged in a harsh stab at Naruto's chest. Naruto almost gracefully redirected the stab minutely away with his left hand blade and stepped in to pound his right tanto into the samurai's heart. The samurai collapsed against the blonde genin and slid off to the side as Naruto pulled his blade out.

The entire confrontation lasted only seconds and Naruto turned to see his water-user assist Sakura with the last samurai. Naruto regrouped in the center of the room and after realizing that there were no more doors to check decided to move back on the route they had taken to regroup with the rest of his command and then render assistance to Kakashi, Kurenai and whoever else was attempting to breach the top level.

-- break --

They met with a bloody and pleased Sakana and company back in the hall they had split up in.

"Everywhere clear on this floor?" Naruto asked.

"Yep, no one left alive." Sakana responded. The kunoichi behind him looked like they were nearing the point of minor chakra exhaustion and wouldn't be fighting-fit for much longer, but the much eased expressions on their faces told Naruto that finally being able to visit the horrors they had experienced on their captors was doing much good. He didn't approve of revenge in general but he wasn't about to begrudge repeated rape-victims the right to messily butcher their rapists.

"We're gonna keep following in the tracks of Kakashi and his team until we catch up or we're done here. I heard from Sakura that our idea to sneak in was a spectacular failure and that the attack is stalled at the stairs to the top floor. We're gonna go assist. Is anyone totally out of chakra?" he received negative head shaking in response. "Remember to mind your limits, you're no good to me dead because you thought you could handle it and you couldn't. You've all been out of practice and righteous rage isn't gonna make up the difference." Naruto waited until he got an assenting nod from everyone before he turned and moved off towards the stairs.

-- break --

Sasuke and Kiba had cleared the first floor finally. In the interest of not loosing anyone they had decided to neither of them split their forces. It was rather time consuming, the genin found out, to move through a barracks built for 200 in two teams of six and seven.

Sasuke's team had racked up the most kills as their side of the building hadn't already been hit by the storm that was Uzumaki Naruto. They had found three groups of more than five samurai that they had to fight it out with but mostly they had only run across groups of two or three at a time and those were relatively easily to put down when you had five very angry ninja at your back. Sasuke himself only garnered another four kills. His group was now waiting for Kiba's group to show up at the base of the stairs to the second floor so they could continue up and provide backup to Kakashi and all the other ninja.

Kiba and his team were finished as well but Kiba was having trouble commanding or even moving. In the second to last room he had thrown a kunai into the head of a samurai who had been about to attack one of the kunoichi he had been assigned to lead. It was his first kill and he was having all the trouble that accompanied it. He knew that he had done the right thing in saving the kunoichi and there had been no sure way to do it without killing the samurai but it was still tearing away at his conscience.

Sasuke looked up at the distraught Kiba when he shuffled in surrounded by his group. He immediately knew the signs of making a first kill and he decided, suddenly fearing Armageddon, that he liked Naruto's way of doing things.

"Hey Kiba… Hey… KIBA!" Sasuke ended up shouting. Kiba's head jerked towards him finally. "Are you going to be okay to finish?" he asked the dog-nin. Kiba seemed to gather himself together before he nodded emphatically. Sasuke nodded and led the twelve other ninja up the stairs and into the carnage that had stunned Naruto before them.

-- break --

Naruto, Sakura and company arrived at the bottom of the stairs and immediately saw the problem facing any ninja who tried to go up them.

The stairs led up to the next floor in a single smooth angle up into the ceiling. The staircase was situated in the middle of the room it occupied with lanes on either side. Naruto noticed when he craned his neck to look up the stairs that there was a railing around the hole they led down in the third floor. The railing was very basic and left plenty of wide gaps to shoot arrows through at anyone ascending the stairs beyond. In addition it was a sure bet that there would be an abundance of the garden-variety sword-swinging kind of samurai up there too.

Then it occurred to Naruto: why did they even have to use the stairs at all? Every ninja here was perfectly capable of jumping one measly story in the air. He turned to Kakashi to relate his idea.

"We don't need to go up these stairs at all Kakashi-sensei. If we move back and leave a couple ninja here to catch anyone coming down we could break a hole in the ceiling somewhere else on this floor and jump up through it and come at them from a different side." Naruto whispered. Kakashi seemed to think about that idea for a long time before he nodded.

"If you are carrying any explosive tags now would be a good time to get them out. We'll leave a team of three ninja here and plant some explosive tags to the stairs when we leave. Once we have opened a hole elsewhere they ninja here can just blow the stairs so they can't get down without injury or at least exposing themselves. We'll leave Haku here because she has unlimited projectiles." Kakashi had finally clued into Haku's gender after hearing Kurenai comment about it on the mission.

--

The orders circulated among the twenty-eight remaining ninja, Team 7 and Team 8 of what exactly was to be done. Team 8 remained below the stairs to make sure that no samurai would make an escape. Team 7 would be taking the entire force of ninja up through a hole they would create in the ceiling of the blood-soaked hallway. The ninja moved to where they were expected to be and once more the operation was waiting on a single sign to start.

--

Naruto reflected that nothing was ever going to go the way anyone planned while they were around him. The explosion had worked flawlessly, better even; he'd thought after seeing a dozen dead samurai fall from the hole. They had leapt up and had no problems there either, there were plenty of places to stand and the opposition left alive in the room was easily taken down. Indeed just after that breach it seemed that the samurai forces could only number twenty-five samurai left maximum and possibly only as many as fifteen bandits. So the plan seemed to have worked better than ever.

Until they opened the door into the next room.

They might have forgotten to take architecture into account. The door they opened was the door to the stairway and while the sudden disappearance of the stairs they had been guarding had confused them, these weren't considered some of the strongest samurai garrisoned here for no reason. The ninja were given only seconds to move and dodge a hail of arrows that would have cut their forces by half. In desperation Naruto flashed through the seals of his oldest combat jutsu.

In place of one there were now fifty Narutos ready to take the arrows meant for the other members of their attack party. Fifteen dispersed in clouds of smoke as arrows found them. The remaining thirty-five charged forward with a roar and began wreaking bloody death amongst the samurai.

Two archers reduced to bloodstains as one clone leapt between them; two primed explosive tags stuck to his chest and arms reaching for the archers.

Five samurai killed after succumbing to overwhelming odds and debilitating attacks from three different Narutos attacking each one.

The third Fukutaichou, of five total, worn down and finally dying with cuts covering his body, souvenirs of his battle against five Naruto clones.

Naruto's clones reduced a fighting force of thirty samurai to nothing but corpses in five minutes. The original stood in the center of the room with his eyes closed as he assimilated the memories of the clones he had just dispelled. His rage at the attack aimed at his comrades was still burning in him and he struggled to calm himself. The other ninja were shocked and amazed at Naruto's actions. Not in the least was the awe of seeing him calmly grab the blade of a swinging katana in order to stab the wielder with one of his tantos. His armor technique was revealed as he knew that some of the ninja had seen an arrow strike him solid in the back and go flipping away as it failed to penetrate.

Naruto mastered himself before turning back to the ninja.

"My chakra is spent; you all are going to have to do the rest without me." Naruto said with a grin. He wasn't actually spent but rather just mentally fatigued. The memories of all the clones crashing into him had taken a toll. He sat down on the floor making sure to affect a tired demeanor. He had to convince them that he was indeed exhausted; he wasn't ready to let on about his chakra reserves. It wasn't a total lie he supposed because he had indeed reached the end of the unrestricted chakra he allowed himself to use. His usable reserves were fast returning though, bleeding back over from the portion he had sealed off. Unfortunately he would be able to go no further without releasing his chakra suppression seal and he wasn't about to do that in front of witnesses yet.

--

"I'll stay with him the rest of you finish this!" said Sakura impatient to be done with this whole bloody business. She couldn't stop for too long or she might have to think about the men she'd killed today. She watched with satisfaction as the ninja split into the same small groups they had been organized in to search the top floor for the remaining samurai and their leader.

"Are you alright?" she asked Naruto anxiously. He did look tired. His eyes told her that he was not just faking this to mislead people to his strength.

"I'll be fine. My usable reserves are empty but already recharging. The Kage Bunshin really took it out of me. Mostly it's just the memories of the clones. Suddenly I have the memories of killing thirty people from thirty-five different perspectives and it's just hitting me a little harder than I thought it would." Naruto replied.

"Well, I'm going to reward you when we get somewhere private for protecting me." Sakura's smile promised many naughty things that Naruto dropped his guilt about killing his enemies to better contemplate what he couldn't wait to experience.

They listened to the fighting in the background and waited for the results to come back. Sotaichou would be difficult to subdue but they were sure Kakashi could handle it if nobody got in his way. The battle was over for them, now they just had to wait for everyone else to be ready so they could release everyone else and leave this hellhole. They wondered idly at the occasional crashes and screams that quickly died away until finally there was silence.

Kakashi and Sasuke both came back into the room to check on the rest of Team 7 after the silence had settled for several minutes.

"Everyone else has left this floor and gone to release the other prisoners. Are you recovered Naruto?" asked Kakashi.

"Hai, I'm fine now."

"Good, we're going to make a final sweep of the barracks to make sure that everyone here is dead or isn't going to get up while we're here. Once we've finished that the others should have finished releasing the prisoners and we'll be able to get out of here. Once we leave we'll block the entrance so this facility can't be used again." Kakashi continued.

"What about the samurai and bandits who are still alive?" asked Sakura.

"There shouldn't be many and those that are still alive won't know much so we'll leave them here." Kakashi answered callously.

"Hai sensei," responded Sakura, Naruto and Sasuke. The genin split up and began searching room to room looking through the top floor checking all the bodies. It was as Kakashi had said: there weren't any that were still alive. They continued their grisly duty down the next two floors checking everything.

On the first floor in a storage room Sasuke made a very important discovery of the clan scrolls corresponding to many of the bloodlines that were represented in the prisoners. They argued a little about what to do with them: Sakura wanted to give them to the people who exhibited the bloodline, Naruto wanted to copy them and then give them back, Sasuke agreed with Kakashi when he said that they would seal them up and take them back to Konoha as an incentive for the prisoners to follow them back to the hidden village and join the ninja forces. Kakashi eventually just pulled rank on them when he couldn't convince Naruto and Sakura to see things his way. He pulled out a blank scroll and began sealing the stolen technique scrolls into it. Once the silver-haired jonin had finished he tucked the scroll into his vest for safekeeping.

Once they had exited the barracks they found the entire prison assembled in the courtyard waiting for the word to move out. Team 7 all noticed that some of the dead samurai in the courtyard and in the bottom floor had substantially less possessions than they had to begin with and some of the former prisoners looked to have had a sudden windfall. Naruto grinned a little at the theft. He, possibly better than anyone who hadn't experienced what the prisoners had, knew what it was like to steal to stay alive and he didn't begrudge them the wealth that their captors had 'donated'.

Kakashi had given the word to move out of the prison after he saw that Kurenai had organized for the wounded and incapacitated to be carried. It was a serious shock to the genin and the other ninja who hadn't been in a major offensive before to notice that it was getting dark when they exited the tunnel that led to the prison.

-- break --

The next morning came softly despite the overcrowded nature of the inn. Getting some 200 people into an inn that was never meant to house more than forty or fifty at most took some doing. It was fortunate indeed that all of the liberated prisoners went straight to sleep after eating their first decent meal since they had been captured, some since they had been alive.

Naruto lounged back on the roof of the inn having been driven outside to get away from the mild claustrophobia crowds brought out in him. He supposed it was a natural reaction from his childhood that told him that when there was that many people around someone would try to kill him mistaking him for his burden. Regardless, he needed some space and the roof seemed like a good place to get it. He chuckled a little at Ino who had drawn the last night watch and was currently patrolling around the walls of the inn.

He allowed himself a smile at her exuberant reaction to his return. In the madness that followed their return with 200 people she had deemed it safe to plant a scorching kiss on him while the genin were being ignored in favor of finding everyone some food and a place to sleep. His smile grew a little and turned slightly perverted when he remembered Sakura getting the same from relieved blonde. He banished those thoughts for now, he wasn't able to act on them so why work himself up?

He gathered that everyone would be waking up late after the huge meal they had eaten and he guessed that only the active ninja would be moving around much in the foreseeable future. He did allow himself to relax a little with the knowledge that since the prisoner operation had been terminated there would be no more attacks. Maybe he would be able to participate in the rebuilding instead of just guarding it.

He heard some footsteps coming up behind him and a quick check of the scent that drifted by confirmed that it was Sakura. He turned his head to greet her but keep his mouth shut at the heavy, dark bags under her eyes and the slightly red tint to them that said she'd been crying. He patted the spot beside him and lifted his arm to embrace her. Only after she had sat and leaned into him did he speak.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked.

"No, it just hit me a little bit ago that I'd killed again, but this time much more. I wanted someone to hold me and I felt you up here so I thought I could come up." Sakura said.

"You can come to me whenever you want and I'll hold you." She nodded and snuggled into him more. It wasn't long before she fell asleep again in his embrace. He would wake her up before anyone saw them, he didn't think she would want to break the deception just yet. For now though he would enjoy her closeness and the light warm breath that caressed his neck.

* * *

AN: Alright kiddies, this is pretty much all I have that's been written and edited so updates will not be coming that the absurd pace of five chapters a day any longer. I was going to wait until I had finished this story in its entirety but it is a monster as I mentioned in the intro that seems only to get longer rather than progressing towards an end.

to address some concerns that haven't been raised yet but probably will: I view an 11yr-old ninja like a 16 or 17yr-old just a little shorter. to me using super-human abilities from age 6 (start of the academy) or younger would force your body to grow faster and your mind to mature quickly. if that helps with the racy scenes then kudos to you. Naruto and Sakura being way too powerful: yes in a sense they are... however, we (I) are going to go with the idea that Naruto has been learning seals and better skills for the entire time he has been in the academy and has had the time to advance at a more realistic rate. Sakura we shall assume is a genius once she's pulled her head from Sasuke's ass and is capable of learning a great deal of information type skills very quickly, whether or not she is able to use these skills slowly gets better as she has more chances to practice (i.e. anyone can hold a scalpel not everyone knows how to use it). I know it's not really realistic for self-improvement to have such a drastic effect but I have alluded to unseen medical teachers and advantageous friendships so the suspension of disbelief may be somewhat swallow-able.

Enjoy  
atom-of-ice


	12. Chapter 11

Two weeks later the mass of people were packing up to go back to Konoha, or in some cases to go for the first time and in many cases to go _anywhere_ else for the very first time. It had been decided that all of the former prisoners would go to the hidden village even if they would not become ninja again or ever. Most of the twenty-eight remaining former ninja wanted to return to their former profession this time as leaf-nin if they were allowed to. It had taken a while but the bloodline purges of the Mist had been explained down to how the Kaguya had been the last to fall and even they had been eradicated. As half the inmates were now without a home to go to at all and the other half were unsure of their welcome should they return, it was easy to choose to make a new life in a different country, the fact that it was the country who had inadvertently rescued them notwithstanding.

The Kaguya children who had been having problems controlling their random bone growths had been tutored by two surviving Kaguya ninja. They were at least able to function in daily life now, although their de facto teachers swore that if they decided to become ninja there would be much more training needed. Some of the other bloodlines were also receiving some jury-rigged training in how to use their inborn gifts. After several days of general tutoring in how to use the bloodlines Kakashi had revealed that he had found some technique scrolls having to do with the bloodlines but they would be taken to Konoha and they would have to be registered as leaf-nins before they would be allowed to study them. They reacted much better than Naruto expected them to react but he eventually wrote it off as a side effect of having to follow horrible orders for so long that the nearly reasonable sounding ones given lately were a relief.

It didn't take long to finally get on the road for the estimated four day journey back to Konoha.

--

Naruto smiled at the sight of Haku and Hinata talking animatedly with a middle-aged kunoichi that had been revealed to be Haku's kaasan. When he'd found out he had immediately understood why she had tried to rush off into the crowd of shinobi right before the attack. Their reunion had been a tearful one and it had taken quite a while to explain how it had happened.

_-flashback-_

_Naruto watched as Haku approached a kunoichi cautiously the morning after the rescue. He saw Hinata behind her as calm and serene as ever and he thought about how glad he was that she hadn't had to dirty her hands with blood yet. Haku had finally worked up the courage to speak after several glances at Hinata and stepped forward._

"_Kaasan?" she asked tremulously. The woman turned to look at her sharply and Naruto immediately saw the family resemblance. The older woman shared the same brown eyes and dark hair. On a closer look it actually appeared to just be an older Haku. The woman's face looked skeptical before softening._

"_Haku?" she asked softly. Haku nodded vigorously and they leapt into each others arms. They began crying and Naruto turned away to preserve the privacy of the moment just after seeing Haku beckon Hinata into the teary hug._

_-end flashback-_

He found out later that day from Hinata that Haku's father hadn't actually killed her mother but she had substituted an ice clone before Haku or her father saw so they both thought she'd been killed. Neither Haku nor her father had even known that she had once been a kunoichi and so neither were prepared for the possibility of a ninja trick to survive. Haku had already killed her father and ran off by the time her mother had been able to deal with the betrayal and began thinking rationally again. They had accepted each other immediately and Hinata had quickly gained a surrogate mother after Rikka, Haku's mother, found out that Hinata had been the cause of Haku's rebirth.

Many of the children had found previously unknown mothers or fathers as the former ninja had gradually thawed and accepted the kids that wielded their bloodline as their own offspring, there was no way to tell who was actually their progeny. Naruto wasn't so naïve to believe that they were actually going to be acting like parents to the kids. It did encourage him that they wouldn't hold the nature of their birth against the children and eventually they might even become the basis for restarting their respective clans in Konoha.

Naruto was curious about how they would explain the mission to the Hokage. Really, he would stop sending them on missions if every time they went on one it upgraded into a much more difficult one. This had probably already turned to another A-rank just due to its importance. Not that it was necessarily that dangerous but that the potential gains in bloodline users would have warranted a team of jonin most likely. Already Team 7's affinity for danger had forced Kiba to take a life long before his time. Kurenai had a long talk with her entire team after the action and especially with Kiba about the unglamorous truth of shinobi service.

Naruto couldn't wait to get back to Konoha. He hadn't been training at all and besides the two new jutsu he'd learned he hadn't done anything by way of getting stronger. He was also looking forward to a stress-free environment to help Sasuke's reformation. He didn't think that he would make great strides in that department but he hoped to get his greedy claws into the avenger's psyche before their inept jonin-sensei could wreck all possibilities of a beneficial change. _Perhaps we'll start with drilling into him the lesson that he needs Sakura and me. Maybe we can move on to sharing information after that. It's probably too much to hope for to try to knock that vengeance kick he told us about out of him. Still I bet if I were careful enough…_

His thoughts were interrupted by Ino dropping down next to him from her short guarding circuit of the caravan. Team 10 was still on guard duty for the procession despite the fact that they were no longer playing host to the wagons. It had been decided that since Team 10 was the freshest out of the Teams present they would be the ones to run guard duty. This consisted of intermittent patrols around the group. With so many shinobi clustered together and especially with such an overwhelming presence of high-level ninja there wasn't much need for patrols and Team 10 only did them lip service. Ino's turn had come up several minutes ago and she must have raced through it and reported a resounding "nothing spotted" to her sensei.

Naruto smiled at her. She was getting much better. He hadn't sensed her until she was seven meters away this time.

"Hello Ino-chan," he said calmly betraying his total lack of surprise.

"Damn it Naruto-kun, am I ever going to surprise you?" she asked in exasperation. He chuckled slightly and shook his head a little setting off another musical cascade from his head.

"I dare say that in another couple months you'll be able to sneak into my shower and I won't even know you're there until you start washing my back." Naruto's face held a wide lecherous grin at the obviously pleasant thought. Ino giggled a little.

"You're such a perv Naruto."

"No more than yourself Hinata-chan." Hinata had walked up in time to comment on Naruto's last statement. "I've seen what you and Haku-chan get up to when you're alone." The indigo-haired kunoichi blushed bright red recalling the particular incident he was recalling. Naruto and Ino both started chuckling lowly as they flashed back to that night.

_-flashback-_

_Naruto and Ino were both outside the inn the former instructing the latter and the latter practicing her stealth. They had been trying different entrances into the inn trying to fool both Naruto's experienced eyes and Sakura's highly developed chakra senses. Already Ino had failed several times, the most entertaining was when she'd mixed up the rooms and had tried to enter through the onsen and nearly landed on Kurenai's lap as she was taking a bath. When asked what she was doing Ino had mumbled a halfhearted excuse about training before rushing out of the room as fast as she could._

_Currently Ino was scaling the wall using chakra focused at her fingertips and toes in an attempt to cut the chakra signature and fool Sakura while entering via a bedroom window on the second floor. As she came even with the window in question she froze noticeably. Naruto frowned at the delay; she wouldn't have been caught by anyone except a jonin so far there was no reason to be so tense. She turned her face to look at Naruto and he saw the expressive confusion and strain there. He decided to take pity on her and continue up to see what the problem was. There was no reason for her to come down since she'd made it this far successfully. Naruto climbed swiftly the same way Ino had but without suppressing his chakra signature._

_He stopped still as he saw the display that had rooted Ino to her spot._

_Hinata and Haku were occupying the room. Everyone was asleep and they had decided to take advantage of that. Hinata was nude displaying endless alabaster skin. Her head was thrown back and it was good that her eyes were squinted shut or she would have surely seen the two voyeurs. Her mouth was opened all the way and her breathing was short and heavy. Most interesting to Naruto and Ino however, was exactly what had caused this. Haku's face was pressed firmly into the junction of Hinata's thighs. The slurping sounds and the movement of her head indicated that the chunin was giving her genin host vigorous oral sex._

_Naruto and Ino were frozen. They stared in awe as Hinata grabbed Haku's head firmly and tensed before shuddering and collapsing. Haku looked up from her position and then crawled up to pace a very deep kiss on Hinata's mouth. The two watchers noticed that while Haku was dressed in her, now typical, kimono it wasn't being worn right. Haku spread it out revealing her own body to a very satisfied heiress before snuggling up to her in an admirable attempt to fit two people into one very petite kimono._

_It was at this point that once Hinata had broken the kiss she noticed Naruto and Ino's faces framed in her window. She squeaked loudly and blushed a red that ran almost all the way down her chest. Haku's head snapped up and saw the two intruders before immediately going back down to hide herself in Hinata's unexpectedly abundant chest._

_The interlopers weren't much more composed. Naruto was of the opinion that what he had just seen ranked right up there as one of the hottest things he'd ever seen. When he turned to Ino to get her opinion, both to lighten the mood with a bad joke and because he was honestly curious, he saw that his fellow voyeur had one of her hands firmly ensconced in her skirt and was obviously rubbing around down there. His eyes cut to Ino's face and he saw the slightly glazed look to her eyes and the prominent blush, all hallmarks of someone highly aroused._

"_Holy shit Ino! Are you getting off on this?" he asked shocked._

"_Eep! No… er… maybe?" she said as she jerked her hand out of her skirt. Naruto grinned wickedly._

"_Well don't let me stop you." Naruto said as he ran his own free hand across her stomach and down into her skirt to cup her very wet pussy. Ino moaned in appreciation as she closed her eyes and ground her hips into Naruto's hand. He could see that she'd already forgotten her audience. It was a good thing she was already close or she might have been really embarrassed about having Naruto bring her off in front of two girls. As it was all he had to do was slip a finger into her slit and use one remaining finger and thumb to pinch her clit lightly and Ino came with a shuddering gasp and almost fell off the wall entirely. Naruto turned to the two still embarrassed kunoichi who were desperately trying to hide under the same kimono._

"_I guess we'll leave you to your evening and try a different window to sneak through. Goodnight," he said._

_Once they had climbed down they had decided to call it a night before anything else strange happened. Ino was going to rush off to her room with Sakura before she was stopped by Naruto._

"_Remember Ino, this never happened. She still hasn't told you how important it is that she doesn't anger her father but I'm telling you to keep it to yourself." Naruto waited for a nod before he grinned and very flagrantly licked and sucked on the finger that had been inside Ino. "Mmm, you taste good Ino-chan." Ino blushed again before running inside to the background of Naruto's chuckles._

_-end flashback-_

"That should teach you to leave your window open while doing things like that." Naruto said to Hinata. She blushed but smiled slightly as if to imply that she wanted them to watch. She wandered off once more to join Haku and Rikka. Naruto turned to the still misty-eyed Ino. "Hey, snap out of it you pervert." He said nudging her shoulder.

"When are you going to fuck Sakura and me again?" she asked suddenly in a low whisper so it wouldn't carry to the others. Naruto looked at her in surprise. She looked very insistent.

"I thought it hurt you."

"Baka, it's supposed to hurt the girl the first time but it gets better. I thought you'd be dying to have us again."

"Oh, I'm ready to go whenever you are but I was honestly waiting for you both to ask me since it seemed to hurt you the other time. I wanted to make sure that you wanted it and it wasn't just my lust-saturated chakra that was making you want it." Ino sighed in relief.

"I was beginning to think that you didn't want us." Ino sniffed. Naruto wanted to comfort her but he couldn't with so many people watching. He didn't trust the villagers to find out about her attachment to the 'demon brat' and make her life hell.

"Of course I want you both Ino! I just thought that you girls might want some say in it was all."

"Okay, but next time you shouldn't make us ask for it. We're yours and you can screw us anytime you like." Ino finished. Naruto's eyebrows leapt up in surprise. He'd begun noticing their submissiveness to him in the months they'd been training together. He wondered if that was another effect of the fox but he found himself enjoying it and he didn't want to sour a good thing by attributing it to the thing that had been the source of so much bad.

He actually began to reflect slightly on the suddenness of Ino's inclusion into his and Sakura's relationship. When he thought back on that day Naruto realized that Ino coming to him with such a very strange request and all that followed afterwards strained reasonable expectations. Their relationship had come too far much too fast and there were times that the male blond worried about it. His connection to Sakura was already deep and growing deeper every day, there was a history there and a background of trust that their relationship was built on. The same could not be said of Ino. Their relationship started out as a lust-driven fling that was later bound by a seal. Naruto was sensible that Ino truly cared for Sakura and while she found him attractive and helpful her loyalties lay fully with the pinkette.

Naruto had already resigned himself to the initial mistake and was working to make the best of it. He'd lost control in his lust, he knew that, but it was now up to them to make it a pleasurable mistake or at least one that they didn't regret. All things considered, they were doing pretty well on that front. Naruto turned his mind to what other things he could do to strengthen his bond with his fellow blonde.

This physical intimacy issue held much promise there…

Pondering this, he soon lost himself once more in the drudgery of marching back to Konoha.

-- break --

They had arrived in Konoha two days after they departed. Needless to say the Sandaime had been shocked once he'd seen so many new faces at the gates. It also entered his head to wonder if this would become the standard of Team 7, they had brought people back to Konoha on every mission they'd been assigned and he was sure that the mission rank had been grossly minimized once again. With a subtle motion of his hand he summoned an ANBU squad to back him up and set another squad in the shadows unseen by the majority of the newcomers.

"Kakashi, report!" the elderly shinobi demanded.

"We completed the mission as directed but in the process found the bandits to be a front for a bloodline breeding prison run by a former Kumo samurai. There were signs that they were planning to sell the untrained children who had exhibited signs of having a bloodline to other ninja villages. The entire facility was underground and had been self-sufficient for years until recently and they'd become forced to show their hand with bandit-like attacks meant to steal food. We liberated the prisoners, as you can see, and I convinced them to come to Konoha by keeping the scrolls we found detailing their respective bloodline abilities and making the requirement that they become Leaf-nin to be allowed to study them. I thought that recruiting them was the best thing to do at the time." Kakashi explained in a clipped, professional tone.

"Very good, we'll house them in the poorer side of Konoha until we can obtain ground for each of the clans to occupy." At this point he motioned to the ANBU behind him and murmured low enough that the refuges wouldn't hear. "Take them to the empty apartments that we keep delaying demolition of. They can stay there for now."

The ANBU moved among the crowd and began dividing them up based on bloodline, if they knew it, and began leading them off into the neighborhood that Naruto inhabited. Sarutobi rubbed his temples in a preemptive strike against the stress migraine that was sure to develop.

"Well Team 7, is this going to become a habit? If you insist on turning my C-rank missions into A-ranks I might have to restrict you to D-ranks." He chuckled at the groan that came from the genin of stated team. "Fortunately I suddenly find myself with an abundance of D-rank missions to hand out. You, along with Teams 8 and 10, will be searching for small clan compounds and abandoned manors that are not in use and then you will be cleaning them for our new arrivals. Hopefully that will occupy you for the foreseeable future." Sarutobi mumbled the last as he moved away motioning the returned Teams to follow him to the Hokage tower.

Once they arrived they were invited to sit down, it would be a long time before they were allowed to leave. After a long and involved debriefing and another lecture on the values of the mission ranking system and how they should respect it by calling for appropriately ranked and trained ninja to supplement the mission. All the teams were allowed to leave on the understanding that they would be in the mission room early the next morning to start fixing the problem they had created.

The genin immediately left to go to their respective homes desperate for some rest. They muttered goodbyes and gradually they split up on their different directions through the city to their homes. Without exception all the young ninja went to bed early and still almost overslept. The stress of the mission had gotten to them no matter how well they had been able to ignore or suppress it up till the end.

-- break --

The next week heralded the start of the chunin exams. This wasn't to say that they were starting yet but rather that all the jonin-senseis for the rookies had told their teams about it. Teams 7, 8, and 10 had all been given the option of participating in them. None of the genin had even hesitated to fill out the acceptance forms and turn them in. With a startling flip in character all the genin who it had been assumed would hesitate (Hinata, Sakura, Ino) were the first to hand in their acceptance waivers.

After they had learned of the chunin exams Team 7, or at least Naruto and Sakura, had begun researching the old tests Konoha had hosted. They had quickly found that the point, at least in part, was to test their essential ninja skills. Thus they could assume that there would be spying, survival, and fighting split up into all the various subdivisions therein. For spying they might have to gather intelligence from a third party such as the examiner or they might have to spy on their fellow examinees. Survival was fairly basic, there weren't many ways to make that more than it already was besides choosing a harsher environment. Fighting of course was infinite in its possibilities: they might fight matches, they might fight as teams, they might fight as individuals, and/or they might fight as a consequence of one of the other stages, they really didn't know how they would fight just that it was guaranteed that they would.

In response to this new information, they had decided to look up spying techniques and to refine their survival skills as they thought they needed the most work there. Unfortunately they still had to contend with the unending D-rank missions they were being sent on.

The D-rank missions weren't so bad when considered fairly. They weren't difficult and they allowed plenty of time for chakra manipulation training when all Naruto had to do was summon up five or ten more clones than he needed and set them to doing chakra control exercises. There were actually a surprising number of abandoned clan houses loitering around Konoha collecting mass amounts of dust and bugs. Naruto figured it had to do with the Kyuubi somehow and Sakura confirmed it when she was ordered to check with the remaining three members of the clan whose house they were cleaning if they would allow it to be used by another clan. That particular clan had been reduced to three members from some fifty members and they had decided that the grief associated with the empty clan house had been too much to deal with. The missing members had all been killed by the Kyuubi when it had attacked. They had bought a smaller house in the residential section so they wouldn't be reminded constantly of their loss and one member had only moved out after he married someone.

That had been the second clan house/complex that they had cleaned out. The one they were currently cleaning was large enough to require the help of Team 10. This presented the pleasant but slightly awkward situation of Naruto and Sakura being close to and interacting with Ino. Naruto had not forgotten the conversation he'd had with the blonde kunoichi on the road back to Konoha and it was having the opposite effect that Ino had wanted. This wasn't to say that Naruto didn't want to have sex with the two kunoichi but he wanted to do it right and he wasn't sure how. That said it could be noted that the two girls really didn't care how as long as it happened again but they wanted Naruto to initiate and they were forced to wait on him.

In the end sexual tension won out, as it usually does.

Naruto had per usual spammed the sprawling house and grounds with Kage Bunshin and the army of blondes were picking up trash, dusting, and scrubbing industriously. The original had decided to clean one of the bedrooms with the help of two of his clones and was making good progress dusting the room. He was about to put back all the traditional futons and dressers when he heard the door behind him slide open. The scent of Sakura hit him hard almost as soon as the door finished opening. Naruto's eyebrows rose slightly when he heard the door slide closed once more. He finally turned to look at her when he didn't hear her move around the room like she was cleaning.

Naruto's jaw nearly hit the ground when he turned just in time to see Sakura's dress hit the floor. The pink-haired girl was now clad only in her sandals, her new ANBU styled greaves, her fishnet armor (she had taken to wearing metal mesh armor after the last mission) and her skintight shorts. Naruto and his two clones stopped work immediately and turned to better appreciate this new higher priority.

--

Sakura had finally had enough of Naruto's hesitance. She understood where it stemmed from but she thought there was no need for it and if it took her forward action to make him see it she would gladly help him along. She had been cleaning the hallways when she finally had enough and decided to confront Naruto. She checked for the presence of any of the jonin or other genin around and after she was sure that they weren't she slipped into the bedroom she was sure that the real Naruto was in.

His back was turned to her but that suited her fine. She didn't think that it would take much convincing to get Naruto to do what she wanted him to; he was a pervert with an accelerated development cycle. She quietly took off her dress, making sure that the zipper wouldn't make a sound as it traversed her torso. She pulled the garment off and tossed it to the side just as he turned around.

--

Naruto needed no more encouragement than what was just given to him. _After all didn't Ino encourage me to take advantage of them? Which reminds me that I need to do something special for her too._ Naruto stepped towards Sakura and reached out to begin peeling those deliciously tight shorts from her.

As soon as the shorts hit the floor Naruto was absorbed in the wonders of Sakura's metal mesh. It was one piece that laced up with ninja wire in the back and it seemed that some thought had gone into its design toward never needing to take it off during a mission.

The blond was fascinated by the slit between Sakura's legs that perfectly framed and slightly parted her pussy lips. He could see the faint sheen of her arousal already preparing her for sex. Naruto decided that he wouldn't wait to unlace the whole garment.

--

Sakura grinned in satisfaction at the lust she saw clearly in Naruto's eyes as he examined her newest additions to her uniform. She'd seen how some civilian girls had worn fishnet stockings to arouse their boyfriends and it occurred to her that she could do the same thing with the mesh armor.

She reached back to begin unlacing the wire ties in the back but hadn't even gotten hold of them before Naruto grabbed her hips. He lifted her up and spun her around to press her against a wall. She automatically wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck.

--

Naruto didn't waste any time in seeking out Sakura's nipples with his mouth. The feeling of crisscrossed wires between his lips and her smooth skin was very interesting and arousing in its way. He impatiently took one hand away from Sakura's ass where they had both slipped to from her hips in order to hold her weight. He quickly undid his belt and allowed its weight to pull his pants down enough to free his straining erection.

He groaned in ecstasy as he sank into the hot, wet core of Sakura.

He felt her hands grasp his head and insistently bring it up to her lips. They mashed together in a violent kiss, tongues dueling inside each other's mouth. Naruto jerked his hips back and slammed them forward again spearing into Sakura. He started a rapid pace pounding into her.

--

Sakura tore her mouth away and moaned lewdly as Naruto began pistoning in and out of her at a brutally fast pace. She was so close in such a short time. She could barely hold back her screams and grunts that were clawing their way up her throat. Naruto had taken her break from kissing to go back to attacking her breasts and she pressed his head further into them.

The friction of her mesh was almost painful against her sensitive breasts and it scraped her inner thighs harshly. She found the pain acutely contrasted the incredible pleasure though and her arousal spiked higher.

She grunted as she tried to thrust her own hips in time to Naruto's and the wet slapping sounds coming from their coupling increased as they got closer to the end.

--

Naruto's vision went white. He slammed forward for the last time and shot streams of cum deep into Sakura. He felt her muscles flutter and clench tightly as she reached her own finish. He heard her keening moan as she rode out the orgasm clinging to him.

Eventually he felt her muscles relax and he slipped wetly out of her. They shared a rather salacious grin as they began collecting their clothes and fixing their appearances.

-- break --

Kakashi stood before the three genin of Team 7 and watched in no little amusement as they displayed more teamwork in passing around a single pen that Naruto had found in his pocket to sign their chunin exam waivers than they had displayed since being assigned nothing but D-rank cleaning missions. He chuckled to himself slightly at their faces when he'd told them that he'd misplaced their original acceptance forms and he needed them to sign again. In reality he hadn't lost them, they were sitting on his desk at his apartment, but the meeting between jonin-sensei's was today and he didn't feel like running back to his apartment to pick up the already completed forms when he was just as able to pick up new forms when they had gone in to get their mission for the day.

--

Naruto couldn't wait to leave, as soon as Sasuke-teme was done with his pen, he was going to be training like a madman. He knew that he lacked the skills to be a good spy, well besides the acting bit, and he needed a way to discretely find out information from others. He knew that his Kage Bunshin would relay everything they learned to him when they dispersed but he wasn't sure how he might employ that without letting anyone know. He could bring them into being and immediately use his personal version of the henge to make them into something small and unnoticeable but that wouldn't cover the smoke and puffing noise they made when they appeared. He was thinking that his best bet would be to have them already in existence and either in place around likely areas or actually somehow on his person somewhere.

In minutes Sasuke had finally finished filling out the necessary information and Naruto had his pen back in his possession. Naruto leapt up and immediately rushed off to his typical training barren training ground to try to devise a way for his clones to spy for him.

-- break --

It had taken two hours but Naruto could now create and dispel his Kage Bunshin without making a sound to hear and only a slight flicker of hazy distortion to see. During his practice when he wasn't making much progress with the smoke plume that had formerly accompanied the appearance and disappearance of his clones Naruto had decided that making a clone before the test and having it assume a shape that would allow for information gathering at a distance would go a long way towards remaining undiscovered. To that end he had settled upon having his clones shapeshift into hawks and having them attempt flying around.

By the time he had eliminated the smoke part of the technique, and conversely gaining the knowledge of how to increase the amount of smoke, he also knew how to fly as a hawk. Not very well mind, but it was still an accomplishment for someone who was never designed to leave the ground for any sustained time period. Besides the hawk didn't have to fly well it just had to get to a perch it could see from, and given its rather spectacular eyesight that perch could be on the other side of Konoha as long as it had a clear line of sight.

One total failure had been inspired by Shino in trying to transform his clones into insects. The size, maneuverability, and commonplace appearance were all ideal it was the eye structure that killed the attempt. Nearly every bug Naruto could find was possessed of compound eyes which were less than useless as they actively caused Naruto headaches which would be counterproductive. Even the auditory structures (they were most certainly _not_ ears) were too different to be useful. So as good as the idea looked on the drawing board something essential was lost in the translation from theory to practice.

--

Ino and Sakura were working on their own versions of information gathering around the other sides of the training ground.

Ino had decided that her body falling totally limp for a period of time necessary to gather all the answers would be fairly obvious and not likely to be sufficiently subtle in the minds of the instructors or examiners. Thus she was now working on a way to see what was on Sakura's piece of paper from across the field.

She had already worked out a way that used the bounced reflection of her sword's blade and a thrown kunai to read what Sakura had written (and she had blushed fairly hard at the rather detailed description of Sakura's last encounter with Naruto) but she was sure that a thrown kunai would not be any less obvious than her loss of bodily control unless it made sense to throw a kunai at the test proctor. She also somewhat doubted her ability to create a situation in which she could justify throwing a kunai at a test proctor.

Now she was considering chakra strings like the Suna puppeteers used to control their puppets. If she could attach one to the pencil of a fellow examinee and link it to her own she would only have to match the hand position that her victim had and her pencil would move in an exact replication of her victim's pencil.

--

Sakura likewise was attempting to find a way to read what Ino had written on her paper from across the field. The pink-haired kunoichi was having marginally better luck with it than Ino was however.

Sakura had decided to modify the kawarimi to switch papers with someone without their knowledge. The idea was grand and the execution shouldn't be beyond her grasp despite the awkward way in which she would need to mold her chakra. The problem she was running into now was getting the paper she swapped for the actual paper to read what the person possessing it thought it should read. So she was frantically working on a way to modify a mild genjutsu she had learned.

The beginner genjutsu taught and demonstrated the basis for much higher-level genjutsu that would actually take things from the mind of the victim to reinforce the illusion or make it more effective in what it showed. She was trying to modify it so that she could tag it to the paper and it would show what the person who she switched with thought they should see on it. She actually had it down but she wasn't satisfied with the strength. Currently; as soon as the person who was viewing it doubted what they were seeing the illusion would fall apart and thus be useless if you were trying to gather information without someone knowing you had it. She figured it would be good enough for the chunin exam but she resolved to ask Naruto about genjutsu seals she could use in the future. She respected the power and complexity of genjutsu as a discipline but she still couldn't stop herself from scoffing at a genjutsu that didn't even need a proper dispelling technique to break.

--

All three genin were almost immediately aware of the intruder as soon as he arrived. Ino, who was on the opposite side of the training area, picked up on the slight signs of contrary-to-nature movement in the trees behind Naruto and Sakura. Sakura picked up on the chakra signature of her third teammate and former crush at a distance jonin would be proud to be able to. Naruto felt Sakura stiffen slightly when she realized that the avenger was heading towards him and asked her what the problem was.

Sasuke stopped several meters outside of their training ground, far enough that he was able to use the last of the natural cover provided by the hardy shrubbery that surrounded the mostly dirt and rock training field. He'd had a hard time tracking down his teammates and he probably wouldn't have found them at all if he hadn't felt Naruto flexing his chakra in ways that made it impossible to conceal. It had taken another 45 minutes of wandering to find exactly which training field they were in and truth be told he really hadn't expected Sakura and Ino to be there at all. Their presence smacked him as odd and he momentarily felt a hint of betrayal though he couldn't understand why he would (had he examined it more he might have linked it to the evidence that Sakura gathering information about all his techniques and Naruto's reserves of chakra represented a good possibility that his teammates were stealing his jutsu, but he was far too arrogant to let that thought fester even if he had examined his minuscule feeling of betrayal).

In a totally unsurprising display of an utter lack of morals, Sasuke activated his Sharingan and watched closely to see if he could copy any jutsu they might be using. He was too far away and his senses too underdeveloped for him to hear the whispers passing between Naruto and Sakura that preceded him getting up and walking over to Ino.

--

Naruto leaned his head towards Sakura once he'd finally pinpointed the Uchiha's position. He needed to utilize that fount of knowledge that had been the first thing that Sakura had which made her useful in the beginning.

"Ne Sakura-chan, what do you know about the Sharingan?" asked Naruto.

"Not much I'm afraid, Naruto-kun. I know it copies techniques including all nin-, gen-, and taijutsu but I don't know anything about how. Why do you ask? Are you looking for a way to make sure Sasuke-teme doesn't copy your jutsu?" asked Sakura.

"Something like that. I'm wondering if it's like a reflex or if the bearer actually knows what they copied. If it's a reflex then they couldn't possibly control it beyond how much the person they copied it from controlled it. Also if they don't understand a technique you could link techniques together by doing all the handseals at once and holding off on releasing the chakra for the first until the second was completed." Naruto thought out loud after answering Sakura's question. "As long as the jutsu you linked were complementary you wouldn't need to worry about jutsu backfiring and that could turn into more harm than good for the person copying me. Since I have undoubtedly more chakra than the teme I could do a jutsu sloppy for him to copy and he would be forced to burn ridiculous amounts of chakra using it because he wouldn't understand it enough to make it more efficient. I'm actually thinking of purposefully doing a couple jutsu that he would copy all linked together and then dispelling the effects beyond the obvious while I'm covered by the chakra smoke plume that would result from throwing too much chakra into it."

Sakura nodded at this. "It seems that is the most likely effect of the Sharingan. I can't imagine pulling total understanding of a jutsu out of just looking at it once. With the ability to see how the chakra is being molded in the technique you would be able to monkey it just as shown but you wouldn't really know the how's or why's. I say go for it, teach the thieving bastard to steal techniques he had no business using. What were you thinking of anyway?" asked Sakura at the end in morbid curiosity. Naruto's library of jutsu was mostly attack jutsu that she was sure the blond didn't want to give to Sasuke free.

"Kage Bunshin combined with Orioke and a kawarimi. Just one clone done normally created in a space that would be behind my enemy, if I was facing one, then the body switch would act putting the real me behind my enemy and my clone in front. The final touch would be turning myself into a full-fledged girl. The idea is that if I see this long string of handseals used against me I'll know where the real one is and I get the satisfaction of teasing Sasuke about being a girl. The bonus is that my shapeshift doesn't release on its own and I believe it's self-sustaining if worn long enough in the form of a living being. It drains chakra because your chakra is a mix of mental and physical and your mental resists the change but if you stayed in it long enough or if you had a traumatic enough experience or even were under the effects of some mental jutsu long enough; your mind would accept the new form and it would fully integrate into you. In essence if someone screwed with Sasuke's mind enough while he was in the Orioke he would assume the girl form permanently unless we showed him how to change back and stuck him like that." Naruto paused here with Sakura staring at him in a mix of awe, horror, and interest. "Obviously we wouldn't want to do that but it is a fear I've had of my shapeshift since I created it, it's a little _too_ perfect, I suppose."

Sakura gasped at the possible ramifications of that. To be stuck in a form changed down to the genetic level, and to believe with all your metal capacity that the form you were wearing was your original form, you would never return to your true original form because to return you would have to have the help of others who would add slight subconscious changes to the form based on how they reacted to your personality in your true original form. She now understood why Naruto refused to teach them the shapeshift technique. He was afraid that they would lose themselves to it. Sakura barely held off hugging Naruto to reassure him, remembering at the last moment that Sasuke was watching and a major deviation from the norm could totally dry up a useful fount of Katon jutsu.

"Unfortunately I can't risk the teme finding out about such a potentially powerful technique if the Sharingan do allow him to understand it so I'm gonna go ask Ino if she could remove the memory of the techniques from his mind should we need to." Sakura absently nodded in approval. If she could, Sasuke might just be able to lend them even more unwitting help as they could use subconscious suggestions to force him to reveal more techniques in greater detail once he knew about them. Or in the event he truly didn't understand what he was copying, they would encourage him to show them off enough for the three lovers to copy them in their own manner.

--

"Hey Ino-chan, can you erase memories when you're inside someone's head?" Naruto asked. Ino jerked her eyes to Naruto in wide surprise. She had told him about the leaps and bounds she'd been making during practice with her family jutsu but she hadn't demonstrated the progress to him and he hadn't asked up till now. There was also the limiting factor of having enough chakra at the end of these training sessions to be able to practice her family's jutsu afterwards.

"Why on earth would I want to do that?" asked Ino. In point of fact she could do something very similar if not exactly what Naruto had asked but she really didn't see a point to it when her father had explained it in an effort to make sure she was cautious and respected her abilities as a mind-walker.

"I was thinking about teaching Sasuke-teme, in the bushes over there, a thing about copying jutsu he neither has the right to nor the ability to use. I have a theory that the Sharingan only copies the techniques on a reflex-like level and imparts no more understanding of the technique than what to do to use it, and I believe that once they've seen it they could predict it coming from someone else." Naruto said. "I am, however, not going to risk my hard won techniques on the assumptions I've made and a half completed theory. So I was going to try an experiment that should teach him not to meddle with my jutsu and confirm the very theory I'm running with. However, if the Sharingan is much better than I've been led to believe I need a way to rip that knowledge from him so he can't use it against me or any other of his supposed allies. I don't believe that Sasuke knows what is best for himself or anyone else and I'm not about to hand a powerful jutsu combination, or any jutsu for that matter, to someone I don't trust."

Ino nodded at this, it was a reasonable fear and precautions should and would be taken to safeguard those involved. "I don't know if I can make him totally forget." Ino soldiered on before Naruto could swear or make his displeasure known. "I do know that I can repress the memory of it to the point he won't be able to retrieve it consciously. If you want it to be a reflexive action then his retrieving it subconsciously shouldn't be a problem and so I assume that would be good enough."

Naruto nodded. "I'm going to try something with that emo prick that I think you'll like. We're going to get up to spar, which I want to do for real when the teme leaves by the way, and you are going to use a kunai and try to fight me. I'm going to be using linked techniques very sloppily and I want to see if Sasuke copies them as he sees them or if he understands them enough to refine them. If he's able to refine them after only a few tries then we know the Sharingan is more dangerous than we thought and we'll have to be more careful around it. If he doesn't improve at all we know that the Sharingan is just an improved mimic ability and we can feed it what we want it to see."

Ino smiled and stood along with Naruto and went out into the middle of the field. Naruto positioned himself so that Sasuke would get an uninterrupted view of his hands when he started sealing. The two blonds faced off.

By some unspoken signal they started.

--

Ino grabbed two kunai and started to rush Naruto. She was careful to make the rush slow and sloppy. She was surprised at how incredibly painful that was after so short a time under the tutelage of Iruka. Naruto began forming handseals at speeds that would make chunin blush with envy.

As Ino raced forward she wondered why Naruto would form the handseals so fast. An instant before he finished she realized that to make the technique legitimate looking he wouldn't be able to hold back on his sealing speed. And with some luck the speed would cover any conscious attempts at improving the technique or breaking down the separate techniques inside it. If Sasuke thought that it was all one technique, then he would execute it as one technique.

Naruto was enveloped in a huge cloud of smoke that Ino thought looked much darker than usual, perhaps another slight deception to get Sasuke thinking that the smoke was supposed to happen not just to mislead the spy. Just a couple feet behind her she felt the displacement of a bunch of air as another plume of smoke exploded into being behind her. She only had a moment to think about what she was going to do about the one behind her when the smoke in front of her was dissipated violently by a Kaze: Toppa which sent her tumbling into the real Naruto who was able to grab her and put a kunai of his own to her throat in her distraction.

Ino thought that this wouldn't be a bad strategy against the Uchiha as the smoke would stop him from copying whatever jutsu Naruto was able to set up while the smoke covered him. It would be a decent advantage anyway because there would be no way to predict what was coming out of the smoke until it actually left.

Ino abandoned this train of thought in favor of dropping her kunai in surrender and discretely grinding her ass into Naruto's crotch. Inwardly she smirked as she felt the stirrings of a positive response. _I can't wait until the broody bastard leaves so I can get some of what Sakura had on the last D-rank._

--

Sasuke seethed quietly. The dobe was developing jutsu specifically to counter him. Of course in the Uchiha's mind anyone would need to specially create jutsu to even attempt to meet the greatness that was an Uchiha's birthright. But to see Naruto successfully modify his signature jutsu to include something that would block Sasuke's vision of the first technique used by both clone and original was something that couldn't be tolerated. Of course it took nearly twice as long for him to get the jutsu off because of the handseals needed but Sasuke was awaiting the day he could pull Naruto's own jutsu out in front of him to prove that he was better than the belled blond would ever be.

Sasuke chuckled softly as he thought about how good rubbing Naruto's face in his failure would be. He turned around and headed back to the Uchiha complex to start more of Kakashi's chakra building exercises. He had seen how much chakra Naruto's jutsu took and he wasn't about to let the blond even think that he was stronger than Sasuke by seeing the Uchiha falter at the chakra expense.

* * *

AN: Hello again! I have updated to the expected pleasure of many of the reviewers. This chapter is kinda short I know but from what I have written yet another sex scene would shortly follow this and to stop this from becoming endless repetitive smut I have seperrated the chapters here. I actually expect to have a lot of fun with the next chapter as I go into the results of Naruto messing with Sasuke and the final bit of buildup before the chunin exams start.

to address some stuff that caught my attention both in the reviews and upon another read through: I realize that Naruto has no real reason to be as logical and advanced as he is and that he's had no model for that behavior (as was pointed out in a very helpful review) but i view it as Naruto socializing under his transformation technique. I think that after a point he would become so desperate for any kind of human contact that he would submit to getting it in a different form - on the heels of that i don't think he would accept that for long we are speaking about someone who knows that ninja are stealthy and turns around to wear bells in his hair and drools at the thought of jutsus that level buildings. I think that Naruto would have disguised himself to get that experience and after satisfying the 'uncontrollable' craving he would then be dissatisfied by not being able to be himself. at this point he views himself as stuck: he can't reveal himself as being so much better without causing panic (his interpretation of the state of things not necessarily the truth) and so he must cling to the idiot facade but for every person who knows the real him i think he gets less satisfied with the mask and goes out of his way to be opposite of that with the people who know him without it, overcompensates somewhat.

Sakura as a target for Orochimaru: hilarious! i've never heard of it happening, it's prolly not going to happen in this story, very funny none the less. I would love to see it if someone can show me a story that doesn't turn out to ship Saku/Oro

Ino is sudden: yes she was. it did disrupt the flow. i've tried to make up for it some in this chapter a little. in the end there's not much I can do to make it better. I've replied to several reviews but for those of you who want to know and didn't ask... this started out as smut oneshot (which i believe that i mentioned in the intro) and it involved that threesome. this rather epic (for me) story grew up around that scene which was the first one written. all that you read started out as the prologue to the smut and my inability to place a proper 'The End' it's not a very good excuse as I probably could have more seamlessly integrated Ino but i didn't and there you have it. I'm a fanfic writer you can't expect it all to be good - if it was it would all be original and you'd've paid for it at a bookstore.

well... i literally have 3/4's of a page written after the end of this as of now so expect an even greater wait for the next chapter. sry :^/  
atom-of-ice

keep the reviews coming: i loves em, they taste like sweet and sour sauce over the souls of the innocent on a bed of stir fried noodles mmmm mmmm good


	13. Chapter 12

Naruto, Ino, and Sakura all sighed slightly in relief when they noticed Sasuke leave. They had wanted to show him something that he would get into trouble or fail at using; they did not want him to continue stealing even sloppy versions of their other techniques and taijutsu which he would have if he had stayed. Had he stayed they would have had to call it a day and find a good excuse to leave the training ground which would mean that all training would be done for the day in the event that Sasuke followed them in hopes of them demonstrating more techniques.

When they were sure he had left for good Sakura sat back down to continue improving her genjutsu covered paper swap while Ino and Naruto moved to resume sparring. The pinkette's next goal was to accomplish the same type of thing with a scroll. She thought that if they weren't tested via a straight exam that they might be tasked with stealing mission information which was typically outlined on a scroll.

Meanwhile, Ino walked over the side of the training area and picked up her practice sword. Iruka had told her that she would receive a real sword when he thought she was ready to have one. Until then she had to make due with a weighted wooden practice sword that had been reinforced with some carved seals. Iruka used a jian and that was what he was teaching Ino to use. Ino's practice sword was 70cm long and slightly wider than the norm at 4cm. It was a rather plain straight sword with twin edges meant primarily to stab but with some clever ninja training and tricks a simple tool transcended to an artist's implement. Iruka's art was death and he was training Ino to a similar degree of artistry.

Naruto had sparred with Ino before when she was using a sword and he'd found that she was indeed a prodigy of the sword. She was capable of nearly keeping up with his kung fu when he had his resistance seals activated and her ability to soak up the kenjutsu lessons from Iruka was fast making her a threat in a real fight. He was actually looking forward to her first real encounter with someone trying to kill her once she had a real sword in her hand. He imagined that it would prove to be a very one sided fight after Ino had removed her opponent's fingers and their ability to use jutsu with them. He resolved to use no jutsu in the coming spar so she wouldn't view his fingers as a priority target; the fingers were a tricky target so you had to make yourself a real nuisance with ninjutsu or genjutsu to justify the risks a swordsman had to take to cut them off.

Ino and Naruto's spar started fast. Naruto leapt forward trying to close the distance in hopes of neutralizing the advantage of reach Ino's sword granted her. Ino quickly used the flat of the blade enforced with her chakra to block the punches and palm strikes that would otherwise break bones. She jumped back slashing viciously to discourage Naruto from following. Distance between them regained Ino stepped forward and began slashing and stabbing trying to probe Naruto's guard and exploit a weakness.

Concentrated as he was on learning the boufuu no mai Naruto was dodging most of what Ino was throwing at him. Sakura actually looked up from her current project to watch the two fighters. They were fairly spectacular, and not a little seductive, to watch since both their styles were based on the fluidity of water and as such focused on bending extremely around blows and attacking around guards. The whole picture looked like they were doing an incredibly lewd dance around each other and despite knowing that any of those deceptively soft looking attempts at blows would really hurt if it connected Sakura was unconsciously waiting for them to start ripping each other's clothes off and fondling each other. The pink-haired kunoichi shook her head and forced herself to get back to work, she would not be the weak link on their team during the chunin exams.

Naruto and Ino stopped and looked at each other. They had been doing their level best to pound each other into the ground without resorting to jutsu or moves that would probably get through but end up being lethal. They mutually decided without a word or motion from the other that unless either of them were holding something drastic back that they were willing to use there wouldn't be a clear winner until Naruto's freakishly incredible stamina turned the tide allowing him to wear the slighter blonde down. They dropped out of their ready stances and nodded to each other in respect.

"You've gotten much better Ino-chan." Naruto said. Ino nodded in thanks and flushed slightly at Naruto's compliment. The blonde kunoichi was beginning to regard Naruto's approval much the same way as she would Sakura's. She hadn't noticed it till now but Naruto was becoming someone she wanted to get closer to, not just someone convenient to flirt with or as someone who was well connected within the shinobi community.

"Well, I'm about ready to call it quits for today. All that excitement with Sasuke means that I've got to think about what to do with him when he finally screws himself up using it." Naruto continued now addressing both kunoichi. "We'll meet here again tomorrow I guess when we'll hopefully have some ideas." He then hugged Ino and gave Sakura a quick kiss before he began walking off.

Both Ino and Sakura had noticed that Naruto was becoming much more affectionate, or at least more demonstrative. He was hugging and touching them more often. Nothing that could be really considered sexual or anything of that nature just hugging and grabbing their hands or shoulders, brushing up against them, being more hands-on when helping with their training, things of that nature.

Ino was of the opinion that Naruto was just working up to something more sexual, that all the touching was just the prelude towards more. Sakura however was of a different opinion.

After she started getting closer to Naruto the pink-toned girl had been learning as much as she could about her new interest. She'd found that there was an appalling lack of affectionate people in his life. She would bet her life that of the people he knew well enough to be affectionate with, he probably only felt safe being so with her and Ino. As she'd gotten more involved in the relationship she'd begun to delve further into Naruto as a person and she'd found that everything she'd believed Sasuke to be Naruto actually was but without some of the rather unwelcome emotional baggage the Uchiha carried around. She'd read case studies of emotionally stunted and deprived individuals and she saw in them reflections of Naruto's behavior and, disturbingly enough, her own behavior. She saw how those people would fixate on people who would show them the barest of kindness or to whom they could relate their own circumstances to and she saw how that had driven both her life and Naruto's.

She actually saw that as the reason that she'd shifted her affections so swiftly and gave herself so freely to the blond now was part of that. Objectively she knew that at first it had simply been replacing a person proven to be false (her image of Sasuke) with another person (Naruto). Nature abhorred a vacuum and in being forced to reevaluate the person central to her own personal identity she'd needed a replacement. She thought however that she was past the point of viewing Naruto as a replacement obsession to the Uchiha and she was now capable of seeing Naruto for himself. Because of this point of view she believed Naruto was simply making up for lost time and she found herself eager to receive those touches and touch back.

The two girls continued to watch the blond until he was obscured by the trees around the training ground. Sakura began to pack away her stuff and left soon after knowing without looking that Ino's eyes followed her departure wistfully. Knowing about the female blonde's crush on her was somewhat uncomfortable to Sakura and despite the rather intimate contact and the much improved rapport between the two girls she still sometimes felt awkward around Ino when Naruto wasn't around as a buffer.

Ino sighed as she watched Sakura follow Naruto's departure. She knew that Sakura still didn't return her affections and despite her own changing attitudes she still felt an intense longing for Sakura. Still she knew now that the best approach was patient and subjective. Like with sneaking around she needed to allow time for her environment to adjust to and accept her presence before she pushed forward.

-- break --

With just a week left before the start of the chunin exams team training had taken on a different feel. It was obvious that the members of Team 7 were focusing on outside individual training and they almost without fail showed up only just before Kakashi and in varied stages of disheveled exhaustion. Kakashi himself was quietly amused at this. He was proud to see such dedication to training in his soldiers but he was entertained in confusion at the idea of what exactly either Naruto or Sakura knew that would account for so severe a state. Contrary to Naruto's first impression, Kakashi didn't hate either Naruto or Sakura. He was simply a bad teacher making an exceptional effort for Sasuke, an effort pushed on by the guilt of having seen a teammate die right in front of him. Had that teammate not been an Uchiha or had they been blond or the kunoichi on his genin team he might have experienced an equal predilection for focusing on Naruto or Sakura to the exclusion of the other two. In the grand scheme of things however he realized that being responsible for them until they made it chunin would require that he put some more effort into teaching them something. If they were finding that something that could take them from his sphere of responsibility sooner, however… well then, more power to them.

Kakashi observed that Sasuke was almost always dead on his feet when he arrived. He'd even arrived later than Kakashi on one occasion. He bore all the hallmarks of impending chakra exhaustion so it was not difficult to determine the cause of his state as practicing with his jutsu library and/or drilling his taijutsu. _Probably overdoing it actually,_ thought Kakashi after seeing Sasuke fall asleep during a short lecture on tactics.

Sakura seemed to be in the midst of a serious wardrobe malfunction that so far had lasted since they'd arrived back in Konoha. She'd tried a different variation to her original outfit every day and that wasn't counting the days she'd tried entirely different-looking outfits. Obviously she was reinventing herself as a kunoichi and although it amused Kakashi that she seemed to need a different outfit to go with the attitude it didn't otherwise concern him. He did mark her preference for armored grieves over her shins and the more robust men's ninja sandals but that just added to the spice where it totally clashed with the overall look of the current outfit.

Naruto was the much more varied of his teammates in condition. While the silver-haired jonin could count on Sasuke to be exhausted and for Sakura to be wearing something new, he couldn't count on anything about Naruto. One day he showed up drenched, one day he showed up coated in dust, another day he was almost as tired as Sasuke to begin with, during another he appeared to have neglected to put on a shirt that morning and then wandered through some brambles on the way to the training ground (if the scratches all over his torso were anything to go by). Kakashi just couldn't peg the condition of Naruto before he showed up, but it was always a surprise.

Much like Kakashi expected: Sasuke was in fact spamming his high-level Katon jutsu over and over again as soon as they finished team training as well as preceding it and when he couldn't dredge up the chakra to repeat he would run through taijutsu katas until his chakra returned. Kakashi had told the boy that the fastest way to increase his reserves (of all the ways to do so quickly) was to repeatedly exhaust his reserves down to the brink of chakra exhaustion. This had the twofold benefit of increasing control and strengthening reserves allowing, as it did, for practice with molding it in addition to stressing the total. It was a much faster method than the more traditional chakra control exercises and physical routines. Unfortunately, it also had the downside of being harmful in the long term but Sasuke had ignored that little tidbit. What did he care if the process might outstrip his physical capacity and damage the actual chakra network? He was an Uchiha and as such he was years if not decades from needing to worry about that.

He was determined beyond reason to acquire the reserves necessary to perform Naruto's technique. He'd perhaps never worked so hard at any one thing in his ninja career (short though it was) and once he was certain he would not collapse from using the technique he would try it out. The warning he'd received in a blinding flash of very painful light had been received. There would be no unveiling a technique in a fight he had not already used at least once.

Naruto might have been flattered that Sasuke was putting in so much effort almost entirely on the blonde's behalf.

Sakura was doing much more than just rearranging what she wore every day. She was also practicing every medical technique she'd been taught over and over again trying to perfect them. She'd actually signed up for and been placed in the rotation of EMNs (emergency medical ninja) that were responsible for responding to injuries obtained while training. Whenever something went wrong with some ninja's training an EMN would respond and provide as much medical aid as possible until they could be moved to the hospital for more complete and comprehensive treatment. In direct defiance of Kakashi she'd signed up for duty during the portion of the morning such that it would routinely make her two hours late to the _scheduled_ time of their team meeting. If he ever did show up on time Sakura would take great pleasure in forcing the tardy jonin to wait two hours and then top it off with an iron-clad, legitimate excuse.

Her evenings were filled with the study of anatomy and new medical techniques when she wasn't practicing taijutsu with Naruto or working with Ino on genjutsu. Her training had since advanced beyond the primarily diagnostic focused jutsu and into the jutsu she would use to actually heal people. Her extra-curricular studies had taught her the chakra scalpels technique (which had been noted as the signature weapon of a competent medic-nin) and even the useful variations on incorrect healing techniques such as leaving a scar or weakness on purpose. She was looking forward to the chunin exams eagerly and considered herself as ready as she would get for them.

Naruto was feeling stretched too thin. In the evenings he was helping both Sakura and Ino where he could and had started a regime where the girls would use their genjutsu on him in order for him to learn to recognize it and break out of it. He'd always had a hard time with genjutsu because of his rather large reserves. He wasn't able to use it due to its miniscule chakra cost and high control requirement but he was also more susceptible to it. His reserves were large enough that he may not feel the fluctuation caused by the insertion of some foreign chakra into his coils and with the Kyuubi he always had a second chakra circulating through his system anyway which would confuse the issue of feeling out what chakra was his and what wasn't. If he couldn't identify foreign chakra acting upon his system he would never be able to either recognize that he was in a genjutsu nor would be ever be able to break out by anything other than pain or a massive chakra pulse.

Team training was his break where he could slack off and relax. Kakashi's newest emphasis on tactics was somewhat interesting after you separated the personalities from it and thought of them as ninja 1, 2, and 3 but it was nothing he hadn't already heard before from the Sandaime. He felt slightly disgusted at the heavy and obvious implications of just who would be doing what during these hypothetical situations but he quickly learned to ignore the distaste. He really couldn't do anything about Kakashi's attitude so yelling and screaming about the unfairness wouldn't help and might make it worse with the inevitable lecture on maturity.

His mornings were filled with training from Sensei and working on his elemental affinities. He practiced his kung fu with Sensei for an hour before dismissing the ape back to the summons realm and sparring with his clones for another half hour. The last hour he worked on his elemental affinity training and he rotated through them by days; starting with water then earth then wind and lastly fire (which still was stalled at the start).

The chunin exam represented a milestone for him. By making it there he would be able to see the results of his training. By passing it and being promoted he would be finished with his dysfunctional sensei and team (he liked Sakura a lot but he also realized that the team as a whole was broken beyond his ability to repair). The exam represented the end of his need to hide his skill and afterwards he would be able to relax his guard some and enjoy himself more again.

All work and no play made Naruto itch for a good prank after all.

The other genin of the Rookie 9 were not idle either. Ino had spotted Shikamaru training with his shadow jutsu, Chouji doing weight training, Kiba sparring with his sister, and she suspected that Shino had caught her watching his taijutsu katas. Hinata and Haku were as thick as thieves around the notably waterlogged training grounds; Naruto expected to see some rather spectacular water jutsu come from the petite Hyuuga over the course of the exam.

With the glaring exception of Kakashi the other senseis were knuckling down and pushing their students to greater and greater efforts. Asuma was forcing his entire team into some fairly intense physical fitness routines aimed at increasing speed and strength. He was also having them run through speed drills with their handseals. Team 10's reliance on jutsu as a primary combat ability was something he didn't have time to train them out of yet but he could reduce the risk by making them faster when reacting. Kurenai was educating her team on stealth and spying. She was ruthlessly drilling their ability to detect others in any environment and testing them repeatedly on stratagems and tactics they could use for different situation she would describe. Because they relied so much on their respective families' abilities she began drilling them on their weaknesses and getting them to think about ways to minimize the danger or to get around it entirely. The Rookies were entering the crucible where weakness would be softened, beaten, and hammered at until it went away or it broke them.

Every ninja in Konoha seemed to be gearing up for the chunin exam.

-- break --

On the last full day before the exam started up Naruto and Sakura noticed something very interesting about their other teammate. If they hadn't been looking specifically for something like the changes they saw they would have surely missed it. Kakashi didn't notice anything out of the standard deviations in his subordinates behavior, sure Sasuke was slightly more sullen than usual but not drastically so.

The team meeting started out with all three genin arriving promptly two hours and fifty-five minutes later than the specified time. Kakashi had made an appearance at three hours and seven minutes after the scheduled time but already in the thirteen minutes without him Naruto and Sakura had noticed some of the changes.

Sasuke seemed to be breathing much more shallowly, was the first thing they noticed. He didn't seem to have exerted himself so he couldn't just be catching his breath and he wasn't favoring one side or the other so it was unlikely to be the result of broken, cracked or bruised ribs. He was also sitting differently, like he was uncomfortable. He kept pulling at his shorts and shirt as if his clothes were irritating him. His sandals were different than the ones he usually wore; the soles seemed to be thicker as if to make him appear taller. His hair didn't stick out in the back quite the same way it usually did, it drooped like it was tired of holding up its own weight and fell a rather surprising distance down his neck. His arm warmers seemed somehow less full than they usually were as did his shin wrappings.

Naruto grinned to himself, the Uchiha was learning: he obviously tried the technique out by himself and was now disguising the results. Sakura had to turn away to stop herself from bursting out in laughter. The Uchiha was walking a mile in the shoes of those he seemed to dislike.

Sasuke had turned himself female.

Naruto and Sakura found that turning Sasuke female was not nearly as entertaining as they thought it should have been. Apparently being such a moody guy made Sasuke a very stoic girl. The entire day including the quick D-rank mission they went on saw no drastic change in the newly minted female.

They began to wonder if Sasuke was affected by the change at all, or if he was just determined that they would see no indication that he was at all weakened by his transformation. Naruto's imagination began to run away with him and he began to get rather disturbed at the notion that Sasuke perhaps enjoyed being female. He tried to disregard this thought several times but the thought wouldn't seem to leave him alone and Naruto began to pay much more attention to how close he was to the last Uchiha. He wasn't sure he wanted anything to do with someone who both enjoyed being female and so fervently rejected groups of willing female companionship.

He was slightly reassured when he noticed the Uchiha looking a little awkward on the walk over to the mission assignment office. _Apparently the bastard has enough of a pair to miss them when they're gone,_ chuckled Naruto, _the world is certainly full of surprises_.

Kakashi had decided that Team 7 couldn't just quit doing missions for the entire week leading up to the chunin exams and as such had gotten them a mission folding and packing flyers for a new business that was having a sale very soon. This, Naruto thought, was a rather odd choice by Kakashi until he began lecturing the genin on the importance of paperwork to the ninja profession (both to their own shinobi and to foreign ninja) and how it was a good thing to pay attention to as boring as it was. He was pushing this lecture so far he was even describing examples of how spying on enemy papers had turned the tides of various battles.

This was incredibly out of character for the silver-haired jonin and each of the genin gave him a pause filled by three inquisitive looks. It was very apparent that they were thinking very hard about what this could mean. Kakashi was proud of his students for looking underneath the underneath though he was a little offended that the idea of their sensei encouraging proper paperwork would make them suspicious of an ulterior motive.

Naruto and Sakura took this as a confirmation that the chunin exam would somehow involve paperwork with vital data on it and would require them to obtain said data. To have such an unusual mission so dose to its start was about as blatant a hint as they expected him capable of delivering without breaking whatever rules were surely in place on him as an instructor. Regardless, the lecture seemed very disingenuous to the genin having experienced their sensei's negligence in that particular arena of ninja duties.

With the chore that very poorly disguised a hint at what the upcoming exam would furnish (at least in part) completed, Naruto and Sakura began to expect their teammate would seek help with the jutsu that had so obviously not done what the thief had expected from seeing it the time he had stolen it.

They were mistaken.

Nary a word regarding his condition passed Sasuke's lips.

Not one to easily give up on his entertainment, Naruto motioned for Sakura to follow him and they began tailing their less talkative teammate as he left their team meeting/training/mission. It didn't take long to learn that the destination would be the Uchiha clan compound. Rather than risk being caught following the brooding female, Sakura took Naruto's hand and led him along a different route to the Uchiha's ancestral lands. An unwelcome reminder of Sakura's former obsession aside, Naruto was glad that they had time to hide themselves before Sasuke managed to get back.

The black-haired neo girl hit her private training ground like a volcano erupting. Sakura was reminded of the saying 'still waters run deep' while seeing the explosion caused by Sauske bottling up 'his' rage all day. The tantrum-thrower's other two teammates were subjected to the full breadth and depth of Sasuke's hate for Naruto expressed in the basest terms Sasuke knew. On a side note, Sakura realized that the Uchiha didn't know nearly as much about swearing as Inner-Sakura did and she reminded herself once more to find Inner-Sakura's source for swearing and never again allow her access to it.

Naruto was so curious he was nearly vibrating. Naruto had always been curious and (as it had been the genesis of many of his abilities as a ninja) he'd never learned to curb the impulse. He wanted to know everything about how Sasuke had ended up as a girl.

So the two interlopers waited. Sasuke was still storming around and ranting though it had become repetitive enough that the two spies had tuned him out until he did something that indicated he was trying to fix the situation. It was obvious to Sakura and Naruto that stomping around in irregular circles was doing nothing for either Sasuke's frustration or towards solving his problem. He eventually stopped pacing and went to a small outbuilding that presumably held extra training equipment. Unlocking the door he went inside and to the surprise of his watchers immediately started swearing again.

Naruto and Sakura's shock was increased when a hissing and spitting _male_ Sauske sprang out of the door totally nude.

Totally… nude…

This strained the bounds of possibility. Naruto couldn't believe that Sasuke would ever walk around naked anywhere, indeed he suspected that the Uchiha even showered with some clothing on. He wished very fervently that he'd brought a camera. The blackmail potential in selling this image to his fan club was incredible and he imagined that he could overcome even the most stringent of overcharges just on the profit made with the pictures. Not to mention the possible behavior modification: he imagined every time Sasuke was being an ass pulling out one of the pictures and thereafter being witness to a meek and humble Uchiha.

Sakura was witnessing the fulfillment of a goal she no longer strove towards. It had been the object of her deepest desires to see Sasuke naked since shortly after she began having 'those' kind of thoughts. She was remarkably nonplussed by the sight: she felt nothing. She wasn't turned on; she wasn't excited; she felt no accomplishment, no victory; nothing at all. She knew that her feelings had undergone a great change since being placed on Team 7 but it had never been so apparent to her as at this moment. In fact, now that she compared, it seemed to her that she'd been very lucky to trade up for Naruto. She giggled softly, _well wouldn't that have been a disappointment after seeing Naruto's._

Shortly after the streaking Sasuke exploded out of the shed, female Sasuke dashed out of the shed in pursuit. Certainly food for thought with regards to how Sasuke had messed up. Already it was more complicated than simply being stuck in a female form. The levity drained away from the spies though they did laugh some more at the concept of Sasuke-chan being a fangirl of Sasuke-kun.

They began to assemble what they knew. Sasuke was a girl. The clone still existed. The clone was independent of Sasuke. Sasuke wasn't obviously exhausted.

The retreated to the edge of the Uchiha compound to conference. Naruto motioned for Sakura to start.

"Obviously, the first thing is that something unexpected happened. From what I know of your jutsu the kage bunshin alone should have nearly knocked him out with the chakra cost alone. That it's still around means something happened that we didn't expect. He doesn't want the clone around but because he's chasing it around rather than dispelling it might mean that he can't or he's worried about getting back to being a boy. I don't know how to even start addressing the problem." Sakura concluded with a decidedly indifferent shrug.

"What worries me is that he didn't seem to be suffering from his chakra being drained by the transformation into a girl. I know we talked about you feeling his reserves increasing lately but it would still be a significant drain that should show up in visible weakness. The only way for the drain to cease is for his subconscious to accept the changes to his body as natural. If that's the case he won't be able to go back to being a boy at all." Naruto made a face that communicated his discomfort at the idea perfectly.

He continued: "His clone shouldn't be acting like that at all. They are copies of your personality and while sometimes certain personality traits shift forward we shouldn't be seeing such a total personality shift. The only thing I can think of would be if he had… what's the word… dissociative identity disorder? The one where there are multiple whole personalities in someone's head. If that were the case then perhaps one of them could take control of a clone but I couldn't really say for sure and even then it would still be dispelled due to chakra requirements eventually; it's only a chakra construct for kami's sake."

"So we don't really know anything besides it being much more screwed up than we ever imagined it being." Sakura summarized.

"Ya, that's about the size of it." They took a moment to digest this. It was rather unwelcome as they had grown accustomed to either already having a possible solution that would work on whichever problem they'd been presented with recently or quickly discovering one soon after the problem was noticed. To be reminded that they were still, in many ways, out of their depth was a great blow to their pride. "I just don't see how to fix this." Naruto resumed. "We did it as petty revenge and sort of as a lesson in stealing techniques from allies but, it's definitely grown out of proportion to that. Also, he hasn't asked for help."

"That's a pretty weak excuse for not helping." Sakura chastised him. "He probably thinks we can't fix it. He doesn't credit either of us with much skill, you in particular, and he's too proud to ask for help from anyone at any rate." Naruto nodded at this. And the conversation died off once more as they delved back into their minds for solutions.

"Part of the problem becomes not revealing too much of what we've spent so much effort hiding," supplied Naruto. "As soon as we reveal a relationship better than grudging teammates he will think twice about bragging about his fire techniques to you and we lose a decent source of jutsu. At the same time, neither one of us will be able to solve this on our own so we can't approach him as individuals. If we're going to help him we're going to show that we've trained together more than he thought we have at _minimum_. He's not stupid and it's likely he'll see more than just the occasional training partners."

"Contrariwise: we do need to help him. Your reputation is such that if it gets out that you're the one who 'damaged' the Last Uchiha… you'll never get anywhere as a ninja. You could be classified as an S-class Konoha patriot to every other ninja village and still be the idiot pariah in this one. That we live amongst ninja means that it will eventually get out, faster because so many people are so willing to blame you," explained Sakura. Naruto smiled at hearing such an unusual word from her. She'd made him read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel after trying to use the books as a description of how she felt the first few weeks of really getting to know Naruto. Because he hadn't read them the comparisons flew right over his head and the pinkette hadn't stopped nagging him until he'd read her copies.

"Alright then Ms. Devil's Advocate, how do we introduce ourselves to the problem and how do we minimize the amount we need to reveal?" asked Naruto. This stumped Sakura for a bit and he smiled slightly at the rather attractive pout she scrunched her face into while she thought about it.

After a pause she said: "We are his teammates after all… we could just go on the excuse that we've been paying more attention to him since the last mission. It would embarrass him sure, but it would make a reasonable excuse that we would notice something wrong with him. We wouldn't need to reveal much at the beginning. He already knows I'm an aspiring medic-nin and you would be expected to notice someone using your own jutsu. He wouldn't be happy to have been caught but he doesn't really have a lot of options at this point, even if he doesn't know that yet."

"I like that idea. I might be able to sell him on the notion that mixing techniques was supposed to be practice for speed. If I told him I was training to use more techniques faster in a battle would explain the chain. He already knows that Kakashi won't teach me any jutsu so he'd believe that I just lack jutsu to choose from." Naruto thought aloud. He nodded to himself, fleshing out the fictitious training in his mind. He didn't expect Sasuke to ask but it would give away the lie if he did and Naruto didn't have an answer that was thought out and immediate.

"We don't have much time to make this right so we need to do this now. I'll go back to my house and grab my medical bag. Do you have your notes and books on jutsu creation?" Naruto nodded to this. "Then you can just go to the door right away. He'll think that we've been watching him independently and there isn't a collusion of effort."

Naruto nodded to her and she jumped away towards her house; leaping from the tree to the compound's wall to the roof of a nearby house and running the roofs to cut time. He smiled slightly again at Sakura's antics; she had taken to using bigger and more obscure words since discovering the 'true' Naruto. He imagined that it was a nod to her pride of being the smartest kunoichi of their generation. She just couldn't stand to sound less intelligent than the company she kept. Returning his thoughts to the business at hand, Naruto began to wonder how he was going to fix an immature trick perpetrated against a rival that had somehow turned out life-changing-ly bad. The Sandaime Hokage had repeatedly told him that his pranks would get him into trouble but up till now they had never threatened his career as a ninja beyond what he could explain away or rise above.

The trip around the Uchiha compound to the front gate was not long enough to get his thoughts into order and being as distracted as he was allowed the greatest introduction to the problem he could have ever asked for.

He was knocked sprawling by the still very naked male Sasuke and it was only his improved reflexes from training with the apes that kept away a repeat of the dreaded "kiss" he had experienced in the Academy. Unfortunately this was only a small consignment from the grander embarrassment. Naked Sasuke proceeded to rub along Naruto's entire body and purr. Naruto nearly vomited. He also knew without any chance of doubt that the clone of Sasuke was _**not**_ Sasuke.

The real Sasuke, inhabiting the neo-girl body, made her appearance shortly afterwards. This arrival brought much screaming and cursing. It was unclear whether or not Sasuke-chan's face was red entirely out of exertion or if some significant fraction realized that he should be dead of acute embarrassment.

Some tandem submission holds later and the male Sasuke was captured and bound in the copious amount of rope Sasuke-chan was discovered to be holding for just such a purpose. Naruto stood next to the female Sasuke and scratched his neck embarrassedly.

"We're never going to admit this ever happened right?" the blond asked.

"Never," was the neo-girl's reply.

"I guess this answers the question I was coming to ask you then." Sasuke's eyebrow rose and Naruto continued. "I was worried that something was wrong with you today. You were acting different and you didn't even stick around to train with Kakashi."

Sasuke just looked intensely awkward. Naruto was unwilling to ease his torment; it may have been childish and a set-up but Naruto was still angry with Sasuke's actions. Eventually Sasuke grunted and blushed again before speaking.

"I was watching your training for the exams a couple days ago when you were sparring with Ino and I copied what I thought was your kage bunshin jutsu. It looked like you were modifying it to beat me but when I tried it yesterday it didn't work like I thought it did."

"It wasn't just kage bunshin…" "I know that!" interrupted Sasuke. There was another odd pause.

Naruto growled as he gave vent to his anger. "You shouldn't even be _stealing_ your teammate's jutsu! You have your own techniques to practice without adding mine!" Sasuke seemed a little taken aback by Naruto's outburst before reacting in the only way he knew how: anger.

"You're just a dobe; you don't need these powerful jutsu! I have an ambition that I need to accomplish. You should be grateful that you have a jutsu powerful enough for me to use!" yelled Sasuke, getting himself worked up for a fight.

"Argh! You're such an ass, teme! I can't believe that I was worried about you! You deserve this for trying to steal my jutsu," ranted Naruto. He tried so hard to be mature most of the time, rejecting his childish persona as just a mask he used to hide himself, but times like this with Sasuke acting so arrogant… it was very easy to throw a screaming tantrum.

It was into this argument that Sakura stepped. She'd gotten back to her house in remarkable time and decided to use the window in her room instead of the door to avoid her parents' questions. She made the return journey a little more sedately to give Naruto time to explain himself before she arrived. She probably should have known that it wouldn't have gone so smoothly. Naruto was too proud of his progress as a ninja to give up any of his skills involuntarily, even as they had done so. It was inevitable that there would be a fight.

It would make it very difficult for Sasuke to deny that there was a problem though.

"Hey! Why are there two of Sasuke and why is one of them using Naruto's Sexy jutsu?" yelled Sakura to break up the building fight. She thought that it was both a reasonable question for her to ask and something similar to what she might have asked as the fangirl she was supposed to be.

That took the wind out of their sails. Sasuke instantly shut up and blushed. Right after though, he looked stricken with fear and practically dove in front of the male Sasuke to block Sakura's sight of him. Naruto's hand went back to his neck in embarrassment as he quieted. Sakura took charge before another fight could break out.

"I see that something is wrong like I thought. What's the matter Sasuke?" asked Sakura in a serious and coaxing voice she had termed her 'medic voice'. Hearing the seriousness in her tone and recalling that she'd joined the EMN Sasuke thought he might save on humiliation and only have his teammates know. They moved off towards the training field that Sasuke had been using to store his other body as they started to figure out what went wrong. Sasuke began to speak as they walked, carrying his bound clone along with him (still doing his best to hide it from Sakura's sight).

"I copied the dobe's jutsu while he was training and something went wrong." Sasuke was clearly going to divulge the details only grudgingly.

"I need you to be more detailed if I'm going to be able to help you Sasuke-kun," scowled Sakura. "If you don't tell me what went wrong we won't be able to fix it." They arrived at the private training ground and Sasuke hurriedly stuffed his clone, still bound, into the shed and slammed the door. It was rather difficult to pull of his normal brooding indifference after such an act but he managed somehow. An arched eyebrow (a technique actually taught to the EMNs to maximize guilt) reminded Sasuke of where the conversation had been going.

Grudgingly Sasuke started again. "When I copied it, it looked like a variation on the kage bunshin that would produce a cloud of chakra smoke that could obscure my doujutsu. I thought that Naruto was designing it specifically to fight me with. Because I wanted the kage bunshin anyway I copied the altered form and I thought I'd be able to find the original form after practicing enough." Sakura nodded at this like it made great sense after she'd glared Naruto into silence. Such unapologetic theft had threatened another eruption of mount Naruto.

"When I tested the jutsu yesterday," Sasuke continued, "it turned out to be very different. I felt a pull like a kawarimi, felt my body surge with chakra and finally felt my chakra split; all in an instant. When the chakra smoke cleared away I saw a clone of me except it was naked. Then I found out that I was stuck in the dobe's stupid technique." Sakura had, at this point, made sure everyone was sitting and was taking notes on a small notepad like a waitress. The boys assumed she was using this to list the individual parts of the explanation so she'd be able to refer to it like a list of symptoms.

"Okay, Naruto do you know what you might have been doing that Sasuke copied?" asked Sakura. It was a very leading question in order to draw an explanation that didn't involve a vindictive prank. Naruto appeared to think about it very hard. Sakura knew he was playing to his childish and slow persona but it still somewhat irritated her to see him act so much dumber than he really was. She was very ready for the chunin exam where he could show the village just what they'd ignored and he could finally be himself all the time without all the troublesome sneaking and hiding.

"I think I was trying a new way of doing handseals so I could use my jutsu faster. I thought that if I just tacked all my handseals into one string it would be like doing all the techniques at once. It didn't work but I didn't mess up as bad as Sasuke-_chan_ did." Here Naruto snickered, Sasuke tried to hit the blond and Sakura needed to level out some more glares to get everyone calmed down again.

Sakura continued writing in her notepad as she summarized the situation for Team 7. "So, Sasuke tried to copy Naruto's signature jutsu while Naruto was trying to link several jutsu together. I don't think I would be wrong in saying that kage bunshin and his Sexy jutsu were involved." She looked at Naruto who nodded. "Sasuke executed them as one jutsu and something happened to cause this. What jutsu precisely were you trying to mix?" this Sakura addressed to Naruto.

"I just wanted to see if it would work so I used the jutsu I'm best at. I combined kage bunshin, my Sexy jutsu, and kawarimi into one string. When I did it, it created a clone, changed me into Sexy-Naruto, and switched me with the clone." Here Naruto was the recipient of two eyebrows raised at his description of his transformation. Apparently Sexy-Naruto was not a good term to use. "Somehow the Sexy jutsu broke apart right after it went up and it wasted a whole bunch of chakra and made too much smoke. Since it didn't work and I couldn't think of why not I didn't practice it anymore. It's not like I've got any really good jutsu to string together anyway." Naruto added grudgingly.

Sasuke was nearly ready to put his head into his hands and cry. Of all the times to copy the dobe, he managed to pick the one time that something could obviously go wrong. Worse he had no idea that it was going to go wrong because Naruto had never used more than the shortened form of the kage bunshin handseals. Sasuke had assumed that the entire sequence for the technique would be much longer due to its apparent usefulness. Thus, he hadn't questioned such a long string of handseals.

Sakura was ignoring the conversation around her. She thought she had a pretty good grasp on what had happened and now she was trying to figure out what went wrong. The progression of events Sasuke described was out of order from what Naruto described it as. The clone should have come first, the chakra splitting, not the kawarimi.

"Sasuke, you said you felt the kawarimi first. Did you notice anything left over from it? Any logs, branches or stones that weren't there before you used the technique?" she asked. Sasuke shook his head and Naruto, for all his acting like a child, looked very interested. She continued with her thoughts aloud. "You can't perform a replacement technique without something to replace yourself with. If you didn't see anything perhaps you used the object as a medium for your clone. Maybe your clone isn't a kage bunshin at all but more like a mizu bunshin or iwa bunshin."

This idea perked the interest and imagination of the two boys. Naruto's mind was already thinking of ways to get a hold of a different clone technique to test his transformation against. Sasuke was curious about the composition of his clone and whether or not there might be a real technique that improved on the same idea. With visions of new jutsu running through their heads, it was left to Sakura to push the conversation forward.

"It might be best if I could examine the clone's body to see exactly what we're working with. It is strange that the clone would have a mind of its own that is not a copy of Sasuke's personality." It went totally over Sasuke's head to question how Sakura knew it wasn't a copy of his personality. It would have been brushed aside that he wouldn't need to bind a clone with his own personality but that he didn't think to question it showed a lack of diligence or lack of suitable paranoia. "Maybe I can use a medical jutsu to determine the medium and maybe that will explain some of what went wrong or why you can't release the technique."

Reluctantly Sasuke-chan allowed Sakura access to the clone male. The seriousness that Sakura possessed convinced Sasuke somewhat that she wasn't going to use the opportunity to revert to fangirl and try to grope him or something.

With the body in front of her, Sakura ran through the handseals of the most comprehensive and detailed medical scan she knew. This jutsu was the next in a series of diagnostic tools that medic-nin rated their progress with. They would not be allowed the next jutsu until they were capable of fixing all the problems revealed by the previous jutsu, thus the origins of medical ranking. Sakura lowered her glowing green hands to the body (it was very unnerving the way it was looking at her). Immediately she knew she was out of her depth and things had just gotten worse again.

Her jutsu was relaying that the body was healthy, had some minor abrasions, had not eaten for a day and most worryingly… it was flesh and blood – not a chakra construct.

-- break --

Naruto and Sakura were now sitting in the Sandaime's office after having ignored Sasuke's threats to never tell anyone until or after it had been fixed. They had just finished telling the old shinobi that after discovering the status of the male body they had preformed another diagnostic on the female body. To their shock it too was a real body and not a chakra construct, though it did have a slightly different chakra signature. Although this explained why the clone, whichever body was the clone, didn't draw chakra from Sasuke nor dispel, it didn't explain how it had happened. No ninja technique could spawn a fully living thing; the closest anyone had come to such a technique had been the Shodaime when he had created the forest that hid Konoha. There was, however, an astronomical difference in the complexity of trees versus a human body.

Hiruzen leaned back in his chair as he digested the story. He knew that they wouldn't lie to him about something like this and their expression and tone convinced him that they believed what they were telling him. He just didn't know if the situation was exactly as they perceived it. In the intermediate, he knew of several techniques that would serve as a quick fix while he looked more closely into the issue. He recalled that the Yamanaka heiress was close friend of Sakura and that even Naruto had mentioned her during their infrequent discussions. That would probably serve as the best solution for now.

"This is a very troubling situation isn't it? I don't believe that you've meant any harm by it and there were many times that I considered actions much more drastic in the face of the Uchiha's thieving during the height of their clan." Naruto and Sakura relaxed a little, they'd been expecting a long lecture on personal responsibility. "We must move carefully in this as a mistake, I fear, would have grave consequences to your teammate. I trust you both to the extent of your abilities so I believe that what you have told me is true in your eyes… unfortunately Sakura's diagnostic capabilities are not the most detailed that Konoha has to offer and she may have missed something." Sarutobi explained.

"I agree with Naruto that his personal variation of the transformation technique should not be taught to Sasuke," continued Sarutobi, "the potential for abuse is too strong in such an untested shinobi. In the short term I believe the best solution would be to introduce your Yamanaka friend, Ino-chan I believe, to the problem. Her family has access to a jutsu that would provide a temporary solution while allowing the situation to be studied more in depth. The jutsu itself should be within your friend's abilities and if she hasn't already been taught it: I've heard it described as swapping the minds of two different targets. I believe that it was developed as a way to sew confusion while decreasing the target's abilities to fight effectively. It has also, if I'm not mistaken, led to several other jutsu that the Yamanaka have used to earn a formidable reputation…" He trailed off here as Naruto cleared his throat. Sarutobi smiled knowing that the blond boy was well acquainted with his tendency to ramble on about jutsu (the nickname Professor wasn't the first thing his enemies had thought of when he'd demonstrated his many techniques against them but it was the one that stuck with him years later).

Naruto was quick on the uptake with his usual out-of-box solutions. "So you want us to have Ino switch Sasuke's mind with Sasuke's clone's mind?" asked Naruto.

"Indeed. I also want you to bring that body to your apartment where I will assign an ANBU medic to meet you. They will have the task of investigating the body's composition and determining if the jutsu will cancel at some point. Hopefully we will find a jutsu that will tell us enough about the body to determine one way or the other what exactly is happening. Once we find a suitably comprehensive diagnostic jutsu we will perform it on Sasuke to make sure we did not switch him into a body that will time out eventually. Ideally, the female body will prove to be the clone and Sasuke need never know anything more about it."

"What if the female body is the real one and the male body is the clone?" asked Sakura.

"Let's not go borrowing trouble just yet. We will discuss the possibility when it becomes apparent and we will need a great deal of time to do so I suspect. For now treat this as a mission that I won't be paying you for." Sarutobi chuckled. Naruto's face had brightened up at the prospect of a mission and immediately collapsed when he heard there would be no pay.

Taking the last statement as a dismissal Sakura stood up to leave and go find Ino, Naruto following her out. Hiruzen shook his head at the interesting problems that Naruto seemed to effortlessly create. He tapped a seal on his desk with a chakra-laden finger to summon an ANBU.

"I need you to get me an ANBU medic: high level and no upcoming missions. Something has come up and it needs a discrete solution that probably won't be simple. If you can find someone looking for a challenge, so much the better. Dismissed."

The ANBU disappeared in a puff of smoke to complete his task.

-- break --

With such a time constraint as they were under, Naruto and Sakura wasted no time in finding Ino. Once they had found her they were sprinting to the Uchiha compound and filling in the female blonde of the situation. They needed a plan to convince Sasuke that the solution the Sandaime had come up with was the best solution but they couldn't tell Sasuke that it hadn't been a solution they had thought of themselves.

"You're sure you know the right jutsu Ino-chan?" asked Naruto for the third time.

"Yes, for the last time I know it! I've even practiced it successfully before." Ino was getting a little exasperated at Naruto's behavior. He wasn't doubting her skills he was just distracted so she knew he wasn't trying to be hurtful. Still, it was a little discouraging to hear the same question so many times.

"Do we have a plan for how we're going to get a hold of the female body?" asked Sakura. She needed to get Naruto thinking productively instead of asking Ino about her skills repeatedly. It would make things unnecessarily hard to have them irritated with each other.

"I was hoping to leave a clone back and have it kawarimi with the female clone as soon as the transfer worked. If the clone dispelled as soon as it switched it might fool the teme into thinking that the technique released as soon as his mind wasn't in the body to hold the technique together. If we could convince him that the jutsu had been canceled he wouldn't expect anything else," was Naruto's explanation.

"That sounds like a good idea. Now we just need a signal for Ino to make that would tell your clone when the switch had been made." Sakura said, starting to feel better about this 'mission'.

"How about if I hold the last handseal until I'm sure that the technique succeeded? If I act like the jutsu took a lot out of me I could even fall down or stumble like it took all my chakra." Ino suggested. Naruto nodded to this. It sounded like the best plan they could put together and still have this done by tonight.

-- break --

They arrived at the gates to the Uchiha compound shortly after they finished planning. It was easy to see by the lights in the compound that Sasuke was still awake and probably training. Rather than deal with the broody teen's attitude in the doorway, they jumped over the wall and headed back to the training ground Naruto and Sakura had been at earlier in the afternoon.

Sasuke's initial reaction to Ino was predictable.

"What's she doing here?" he asked snidely; glaring at the girl in question.

"She's the one who will be able to put this right." Naruto answered for her. "We've thought about it and we think that if we can switch your mind back into your real body that your clone will just dispel on its own. We know that the sequence of the messed up jutsu was wrong, and we know it's possible to create a clone with no mind if you mess up: so it stands to reason that it could be possible to create a clone and put your own mind inside it rather than leaving it in your original body. Ino knows a jutsu that will switch the minds of two people. She swaps you and the clone and you're back in the body you had before." Naruto smiled his widest and most guileless grin.

Sasuke thought about this for a bit. When no better or other solution occurred to him he nodded. He hated the thought that he was dependent on his recovery to a fangirl. Tamping down his inevitable embarrassment he opened up the same shed as this afternoon and removed a much more subdued male body (still bound in ropes).

Ino nodded to him and indicated he should sit the body down and then sit down facing it. A chain of twelve handseals, a surge of chakra, and some indistinct mumbling from Ino and Sasuke found himself bound in ropes.

He was looking at himself from the other side of the perspective for only an instant before Ino collapsed and his female clone exploded into smoke.

Sakura marveled once more at Naruto's mastery of the kawarimi jutsu. Even expecting it she was only able to glimpse a flash of orange before the body erupted in chakra smoke. When it had cleared she saw that her lover had even left the clothes the female had been wearing behind. She knew that would generate even more confusion and almost guaranteed that Sasuke would never attempt this jutsu again.

In the corner of her eye she noticed that Naruto looked slightly surprised after the kawarimi and she wondered why that was. _Surely he wasn't surprised at the timing?_ She thought. She made a note to ask him about it. She didn't know why but it seemed that it was somehow more significant than just surprise.

With Sasuke back in his body of choice, the female clone being ferried to Naruto's apartment by several kage bunshin and most of the trio's secrets safe from the Uchiha's prying; Naruto, Sakura and Ino were ready to call it a night. It was the work of a moment to cut the bindings on a still naked Sasuke and they turned to go. A very grudging thanks from Sasuke and a slightly more polite than normal 'shove off' to follow it and the three were bounding away from the brooding ass and making towards Naruto's apartment as fast as they could.

-- break --

They arrived at Naruto's apartment to find that the clones had forgotten exactly which apartment Naruto lived in.

The door of the apartment next door to Naruto's was open, the lock having been picked, and inside they could hear the scuffles of several people moving around and talking lowly.

They entered the apartment to find an ANBU directing two Naruto clones around the room setting up what looked to be medical test equipment. In a gurney situated in the center of the main room lay Sasuke-chan. It was easy to see that the ANBU had injected a sedative of some sort and was busy inserting various IVs into her. The two Naruto's were placing equipment they were unsealing from scrolls, presumably the ANBU's, on the various tables and shelves the apartment already had.

The ANBU, rabbit judging by the mask, didn't even acknowledge their presence though the two clones looked up and nodded to them before going back to their work. The trio of genin waited uncertainly for Rabbit to address them.

"I've been given this mission from Hokage-sama to determine the condition of this body and how it came to be. I've been told that some of your jutsu are responsible for this. I will need a summary of the jutsu effects along with whatever you were able to glean from Uchiha-san about how it was mishandled. Against my preference you all have been entered into the chunin exam tomorrow and you will need rest for it. You must do your best to survive the coming trials as you hold vital knowledge of how this was performed and my preliminary scanning's show this to be a perfectly healthy, functioning, female body." The ANBU delivered this in a serious tone that surprisingly held some inflection in it hinting that this ANBU was much more than just some highly trained killer living only for the next job.

Naruto nodded and ushered the two girls out of the apartment and shut the door behind them.

"I guess I'll see you both tomorrow at the first part of the exam then," said Naruto. He reached out and pulled Sakura to him to give her a scorching kiss. They broke apart breathing heavily with Sakura pressed fully up against Naruto.

He then reached out to Ino and pulled her in likewise. Ino moaned slightly as Naruto's tongue brushed across her lips before diving between them in search of her own tongue. She felt Sakura's body pressed against her side, the other girl hadn't left Naruto's embrace, and though it excited her to feel the softness concealing the steel hard strength beneath it the excitement wasn't as strong as it had been.

Naruto's kiss was amazing; her body surged with heat and pleasure. She could feel her nipples tighten and her groin clench in anticipation of how several of these kisses had continued. She felt his hand slide down her back to grip her ass and she ground her hips into his in response. She broke the kiss slowly and savored the feelings. She smiled coquettishly at Naruto before she spun around and walked away, hips swaying a little extra.

Naruto growled a little at his fellow blonde. She was such a tease. He smiled though because of it. He knew it was her way of taking back a little control. They had gotten involved with each other at the spur of the moment and they were still trying to find their positions to each other. Neither of them were truly comfortable with the relationship, they knew that, but they were trying to improve it.

Naruto looked down at Sakura, still pressed up against his side. She too was looking at Ino walking away. She turned back to Naruto and snuggled into his chest again.

"I should probably go home, but this is very comfortable," she said.

"I agree, I like having you here with me, but we do need rest to be ready tomorrow and your parents will be worried if you don't come home."

"I know." Sakura turned her head up to Naruto's and kissed him again. This wasn't like the usual kisses. It was softer, not carnal at all. Something that Naruto had no experience in though he relished it all the same. "See you in the morning, lover."

Naruto's grin wouldn't be wiped off for anything as he watched Sakura take the same walk as Ino moments before.

* * *

AN:Well there wasn't a sex scene like I thought there would be. I guess the mood just hasn't struck me right. I seem to start the buildup towards one and then lose motivation by the time I get to the hot and heavy stuff. I'm finding that I have more trouble building up to a scene with Ino in particular, make of that what you will. I just finished this today and totally burned out on the next paragraph introducing the start of the exam and the start of the chapter. This means it's looking to be another long wait between chapters.

It occurs to me that I haven't been very good about giving you guys jutsu translations. Sorry about that.... I don't believe that looks kindly upon just posting a list of the jutsu and my master list of possible jutsu give out too many spoilers for this fic. End result: If you'd like a jutsu translated (or at least what I thought it would mean at the time) please review to that effect or better PM me asking about it and I will sent you a message back with the english and a description should you desire.

Thanks for sticking with this,  
atom-of-ice


	14. Chapter 13

The morning of the chunin exam and Team 7 was heading up the steps of the test building. An anonymous administration building most of the time it had been commandeered for one of its conference rooms. Here the first stage of the chunin exams would start.

They observed the many different teams, most from Konoha, entering the building but they paused outside for a bit. They knew that they had plenty of time to get to their assigned exam room and they thought (two thirds of the team at least) that the intervening time would be better spent cataloguing their prospective opponents.

They observed several teams from Kiri, a dozen from Suna, one from Kusa, a handful from Ame, and one or two each from Taki, Kumo, Oto, and several teams from the smaller countries without ninja villages. They tried to classify as much about the team members as they could based on visible weapons, clothing, equipment, stance, etc. Anything and everything was fodder for deducing useful information; and for a ninja, information was often the difference between life and death.

When they began to see the other rookie teams entering the building they decided that it would be a good time to follow. Team 8 was the first to show up and it seemed strange to see them without Haku shadowing them. The older kunoichi had become such a fixture in that team that the three members of Team 7 thought for a moment that Team 8 was missing a member.

Team 10 showed up not long afterwards and Naruto decided that he could use this time somewhat better than just looking at the last stragglers into the exam.

"I'll meet up with you guys in a couple minutes." Naruto said, already heading towards the newly arrived genin. Sakura smiled a little having some idea of what Naruto was up to, Sasuke just sneered not having any idea of what someone could possibly want with that bunch of losers.

- break -

Naruto caught up with Ino just inside the entrance of the building. With a subtle jerk of his head he motioned to an empty hallway and Ino excused herself from her teammates.

She'd barely entered the hallway when she was grabbed and slammed up against the wall out of sight of the main entrance. She struggled franticly for a moment until she recognized the chakra signature of her captor.

"You should be more careful Ino-chan. I could have been someone in a henge trying to take you out of the exam." Ino could hear the smirk in Naruto's voice. "Maybe I should punish you for being so careless."

He punctuated this by pressing his hips hard into her butt and she could feel exactly how that might happen. She whimpered a little and pressed back against him so convey her thoughts on the matter. He chuckled a little and Ino shivered in anticipation.

She felt him adjust his grip on her arms and pulled back a little before spinning her to face down the hallway. He shoved her forward and she had little choice but to walk wherever he was leading her. Already she was getting aroused at how forceful Naruto was being, her nipples were so hard she thought she might be able to cut glass with them and her slit was already damp and on its way to drooling.

Naruto shoved his blonde captive though a nearby office door and surveyed his surroundings. The desk looked like it would be just about perfect for what he had planned. Ino stumbled as he marched her towards the desk, barely regaining her footing before he pushed her down to rest her chest on it.

Another quick shift of his hands made it possible to hold both of her arms and still hold her down using only one hand. His other hand flipped up the back of her skirt and began unwinding the bandages that served as her panties.

Soon the cloth strips were loose enough to expose Ino's pussy and Naruto's free hand began working on his own confinement. His dick sprung free and with no warning to Ino he plunged it into her.

Ino was writhing around on the desk ever since Naruto had pushed her down on it. His hand roughly pulling her bandages apart and off had the effect of dragging feet of fabric across her very stimulated clit as they unraveled. His hand left her for a moment and she grunted in disappointment only to scream in ecstasy as Naruto drove into her.

She felt him start a furious pace slamming into her again and again. Her nipples were dragged forward and backwards across the desk and her shirt scraped against them with every plunge. Naruto abandoned her arms to get a better grip on her hips and she flailed them about for a moment until she could grip the desk, white-knuckled, against the spiking pleasure.

The wet slaps as Naruto connected against her rear again and again nearly drowned out her grunts and yelps as she felt his dick fill her to bursting before jerking away in an instant. She felt herself climb higher and higher in her pleasure and she desperately bit down on her forearm to quiet herself.

She tried to push back against Naruto in time to his thrusts but it was a futile effort. She could only lay there, biting her arm, lewdly spreading her legs wider and wait for the end. With a deep, shuddering gasp of breath she screamed out her release into the fabric of her arm warmer and went limp.

She could still feel Naruto pounding away prolonging her climax even as she shuddered and felt her own juices streaming down her legs.

Naruto felt Ino peak and her muscles fluttered and clenched on him even as he felt her flood his legs with her climax. He continued thrusting into her for only a couple moments more before his own peak hit.

He jerked on unsteady legs as he came into Ino's hot, wet slit. His thrusts grew smaller and out of rhythm as he filled her with his cum.

Finally finished he pulled out and stumbled back to watch as their combined releases slowly oozed out of Ino. He saw that Ino would occasionally shudder with another aftershock and a rush of cum would squirt out with the shudder before tapering back to a dribble. He couldn't help but think that she was somehow indescribably hot looking thoroughly debauched.

Ino lay there insensible to her surroundings for a moment. She knew that her face was covered in her own drool and she could still feel herself leaking from her pussy. There was something devilishly exciting about lying there with her clothes tousled and cum leaking from her slit. She shivered again at the delightfully dirty sensation of having her lovers cum sliding down her legs and she moaned in loss as more of their combined essences continued to seep out of her.

She hoped Naruto had a plan for getting cleaned up though, because as much as she had enjoyed this little tryst she didn't want to share it with her teammates. They probably wouldn't take it well.

"Ungmmm," she tried to speak. Obviously it was going to take a minute.

She felt Naruto approach again and sit down on the desk beside her before rubbing circles her back. It was very relaxing and she could almost feel herself slipping into sleep before he spoke.

"We should probably get cleaned up some before our teams come looking for us." Naruto stated. "There's a bathroom just down the hall, I'll help you get there since I get the feeling you can't stand without help right now."

Ino giggled a little at how incredibly smug Naruto sounded. She thought that he certainly had a right to be considering that he'd just finished screwing her to insensibility. She had certainly asked for it hadn't she? Encouraging him to take her and Sakura was having its effect and in such delightfully kinky ways too. She tried to push herself up on her arms. It was all she could do to get turned around to sit on the desk instead of draped over it. She had to lean against Naruto so that she didn't fall over immediately. She imagined that they looked quite the pair right now. Disheveled the both of them with Naruto's pants open and her bandages slipping further down her legs. She giggled a little more at the mental image.

When feeling had mostly returned to her she shifted herself over so she was straddling Naruto's lap. She began sliding forward and backward against him and she was soon rewarded by the very stirring she'd hoped to elicit.

"I think that the bathroom with have to wait a bit." Ino sat up and proceeded to slam down on Naruto's turgid shaft. Naruto grunted at the sudden sensations and let out a low groan as Ino set a slow, grinding pace.

Naruto reveled in the slow, slinking movements of his blonde lover. She was sliding down to be fully seated with him inside her. He felt her clench her inner muscles tightly and tantalizingly rise up while making slow circles with her hips. She was stirring his cock around inside her and Naruto was having trouble keeping himself from popping right away.

He heard her moaning and gasping with the effort it took to keep herself under control. He wrapped his arms around her and crushed her body to his and progress to devouring her mouth. They swallowed each other's moans at the new angle and the delicious contact between them.

Ino's self control broke. She began desperately slamming herself down on Naruto in a race to her finish. She once more felt Naruto swell within her. She bit down harshly on Naruto's shoulder as she felt him explode into her. The feeling of the squirt of cum and the spastic pressure against her womb set her off. She made a high, keening noise into the damp fabric of Naruto's uwagi.

They panted heavily and the only sound in the room was the heavy breathing as both blonds attempted to regain their strength. Naruto smiled down at Ino once he'd recovered somewhat.

"Never satisfied until you're on top are you Ino-chan?" he chuckled. It was clear he was poking fun at her a little but he understood that she wasn't going to let Naruto's insane chakra levels dictate whether she was submissive or not. He wasn't sure he was entirely comfortable with his chakra acting like such an overwhelming presence either but he had found some mention of the phenomenon in a medical journal and again in a book of seduction techniques as they applied against ninja and civilian targets.

He was roused from his short introspection by Ino's head impacting his chest softly.

"Get me to that bathroom lover, we've still got an exam going on." She said.

- break -

Sakura smirked at Naruto when he found them on the second floor standing behind a crowd of people. Her eyebrow rose up silently demanding details at a later date. He smiled in response to her unvoiced demand.

He noticed that the pack of people was centered in front of a door just a little further down the hall. It seemed that one team was making a ruckus challenging the apparent guards in front of the room. Naruto winced a little at the boy in a green spandex suit he thought he'd caught sight of and hurried to address his team.

"So, why are we on the second floor?" Naruto asked. "I thought our room assignments specified the third floor."

Sasuke grunted and Naruto thought he detected a little surprise in the moody boy's response. Sakura was the one that responded in a whisper so as to not be overheard. The voices in the group were getting louder before abruptly quieting.

"Someone has set up a genjutsu on one of the rooms and there are a couple people guarding it. We've been waiting here for you." Naruto nodded at this and then gestured over his shoulder to the stairway behind him that would take them to the third floor. Both his teammates nodded and they slipped quietly up the stairs to find their room. Teams 8 and 10 followed them up the stairs after seeing their departure.

- break -

Kakashi was utterly incapable of subtlety where his genin were concerned.

The first test was a paper test. The rules had been explained in such a way as basically begged cheating during the course of the 45 minutes they had to complete the exam. Basically there were nine questions on a sheet of paper that they would need to answer, the tenth question would be given in the last ten minutes of the exam and the proctors would apparently need to explain some rules about it. Everyone started out with ten points; for every question you got wrong you lost a point, for every time you got caught cheating you lost two points. Knowing that if they truly wanted to discourage cheating there would be some sort of no tolerance policy it could be inferred that the rules were to encourage cheating attempts. The difficulty of the questions, impossible for normal genin, seemed to bear that out.

The only other catch was that the genin would be passed or failed as a team. If one team member failed then the rest of the team would fail with them. This encouraged teammates to pass the information they gathered to each other if one member wasn't skilled enough to gather it on their own without being caught. Naruto imagined that would be his own situation if his façade of idiocy were not just a mask.

The large scarred man giving the test had introduced himself as Morino Ibiki and Naruto had thought he'd heard that name before mentioned in conjunction with the bogie man… as the thing that the bogie man feared. He was huge with a couple of rather impressive scars running across his face. He wore an immaculate uniform in grey with a big, black leather trench coat over it and a bandana covering his head. He was the very definition of intimidating and as an introduction he'd stopped a fight with the force of his glare alone. Naruto thought that this might have been the guy who'd written the book on badass, don't-fuck-with-me appearance. It really made Sasuke's attempts pathetic by comparison.

Around the outside of the room sat dozens of test proctors who would be helping Ibiki to catch cheaters. If the quality of the cheating going on without comment was any indication of their skills however, then Naruto was disgusted with Konoha's trainee interrogation division. He imagined, hoped really, that they truly did see every attempt and just let the best ones pass without comment or note. He was actually curious if he could get a copy of the notes they took. It might be interesting to see where he and the genin he knew had messed up.

It seemed to Naruto that all the rookie teams were shoe-ins for this part of the exam. He'd already seen Hinata activate her doujutsu, Kiba conversing lowly with his dog, Shino speaking to an insect of some variety, Shikamaru attach his shadow to someone's pen and link it up with Chouji's as well. The only people he didn't see cheating was his team and Ino and that only because he was sitting behind Sasuke who almost assuredly had his Sharingan activated to copy someone's pencil movements.

His own method had been to create several clones transformed into hawks and insects before entering the test building. His problems with the insects vision aside he thought that they might find themselves useful and so it would be better to have them than to not. It was only a matter of moments for the hawks to find the room he was in and the insects he carried in the folds of his clothes to disperse amongst the seated genin. It then became something of a race amongst his clones to acquire and then transmit the correct answers to the original Naruto the fastest.

A hawk on a telephone pole overlooking the head examiner's desk won having been able to see the answer key before the test had even officially started.

Sakura was disgusted with her fellow genin hopefuls. She'd built up in her mind an agonizing test where the very slightest sign of failure was punished with extreme alacrity. The reality in her mind would never cut out enough of the genin. Five chances to get the answers (and just the answers mind you they hadn't specified that you needed to show the process of getting the answer) spoke to her of the abysmal incompetence of anyone who failed this test.

Her disgust and shock were total when it only took five minutes for the first team to be thrown out. Inner-Sakura was throwing a screaming, raging, full-bore, five alarm, ranting fit. It was only the possibility of getting disqualified that kept Sakura from following her alter-ego's example. It wasn't even like anyone had to cheat anyway. They should be perfectly capable of working out the answers to these questions themselves. She had no sympathy for anyone stupid enough to fail this test.

It had taken her just moments to scribble down the three lines of sealing script that made up the equilateral triangle necessary to generate the minor illusion of a complete test to the recipient. She'd charged it with just enough chakra to make it last until five minutes before the end of the exam. Now it was just a matter of waiting for that older genin who'd been eyeing her lecherously to finish filling out his test so she could make the switch. _Bastard thinks he can eye me up, _she fumed, _only Naruto is allowed to look at me like that!_

Ino was thinking about the recent turns her life had been taking. This had become a very regular thing for her to do when she was bored. In consequence she thought about it a lot: during team training, before going to bed, during dinner with her family on occasion. She had much to think about on that score.

First she thought about how she'd gotten where she was. That hadn't lasted too long, sudden though the changes were there was a logical progression of events and motivations. This struck her as reminiscing and it bothered her that she was starting so young and she soon gave it up as a bad job. She really didn't want to accelerate to process of becoming like her father; constantly going out with his former teammates and getting drunk, telling stories that every one of them had been there for and heard a thousand times thereafter. Who knew; maybe it wasn't getting old that gave you wrinkles but _acting_ like an old person.

Second she thought about where she was; not physically but metaphorically. She enjoyed cataloguing her skills now that she had a great deal more than she'd started out her genin career with. She thought about the jutsu she'd learned; the sword instruction she was getting from Iruka-sensei; her new skill in sneaking around gathering gossip… err… information. She thought about her improved relationship with her parents now that she wasn't fawning over Sasuke every waking second. Her father in particular was happy with the change and she attributed it to not chasing a boy mixed with her rekindled interest in the jutsu of her clan. She spared a thought to how apocalyptic he would be should he ever find out what she'd done not 20 minutes ago and planned to do much more frequently. No she was mostly happy with where she was as a ninja at this point and she didn't have any serious complaints about her personal life either.

Third were her current thoughts on where she was going from here. She was somewhat confused regarding her relationship with Naruto and Sakura. She enjoyed the sex. Definitely enjoyed the sex, but she wondered if she was truly with the two in a romantic relationship sense. It was apparent that neither Naruto nor Sakura cared as much for her as they did for each other. It was only logical really having known each other intimately for a month or so longer than she'd been in the picture and having been through some very stressful situations to weld their bond even more tightly. This didn't bother her as much as she thought it might. She certainly felt somewhat excluded at times but then she was the interloper really.

To top off her confusion about the three-way relationship she found that she enjoyed Naruto's company much more than she thought she would, which raised more questions she needed to ask herself. Really she'd started this relationship to get closer to Sakura without actually involving the pink-haired girl or opening herself to ridicule and rejection. But none-the-less, here she was eagerly seeking out Naruto's affections as well as her best friend's. The questions just kept coming and now that she was paying attention to them they really wouldn't go away.

Was she really as much of a lesbian as she thought? Was she mistaking her feelings to be something more than they were? Or was it perhaps something else in the dynamics that caused her to doubt her chosen orientation. She'd thought that she was head over heels in love with Sakura but she was beginning to think that she was mistaking romantic love with a deep friendship and some experimental lust. She did know that her feelings for Sakura hadn't changed drastically since exposing them. She still loved the pinkette deeply, she was even still very much attracted to her but it had taken on the feel of curious experimentation rather than a grand romance of true love.

With Naruto she was very attracted to him physically and she could say without hesitation that he was one of her best friends now. He knew more about her now than her teammates did and that wasn't because she kept everything from Shikamaru and Chouji like Sakura and Naruto actively hid who they were and what they acted like around Sasuke. She was sure that he would be a great boyfriend and she knew he was a great lover. So it wasn't the inclusion of Naruto that nagged at her.

The snag hit when she took Naruto and Sakura together, Ino thought. She wasn't confused any longer she'd figured it out. She was attracted to them both but felt left out when they were together. She wanted a boyfriend or girlfriend (and eventually a lover) that was only concerned with catering to her. She knew that Naruto and Sakura didn't mean to act like she was a third wheel… sometimes it was just that they were closer to each other than they were to her and they would naturally gravitate to one another before they would to her.

Ino sat back safe in her latest revelation. She wasn't in love with them, she liked them very much and had every intention of continuing their sexual escapades together, but she wasn't in love with them. They were her very best friends that she also had sex with on a reoccurring basis that would be their new classification in her mind. She just needed to explain that to them and then the three of them could talk about where they would go from there.

Regardless of outcome however she really felt better having figured that out. It had been nagging at her something fierce even though she thought she'd effectively been ignoring it.

Returning her attention to the exam Ino figured there were about 15 minutes left until the scarred proctor up front gave that tenth question. She looked around and saw that most people were nearly done with answering the questions (those that were going to finish that was) and she thought now would be a good time to get those answers. She surveyed the room (she nearly gagged at how blatant the mirrors that bun-headed girl had stuck to the ceiling were) and found a target.

The handseals she performed discretely under the table activated a Yamanaka clan genjutsu that allowed the user to view the surface thoughts of the target until either the target or the user canceled the jutsu. It was the early basis of their mind-reading techniques using an invasive chakra probe structured like a genjutsu which would pick up its image from the mind of the victim and project it to the user. The early variation that Ino knew was only visual; no audio or feeling or even internal commentary on what the victim was seeing but she didn't need anything except to see someone's completed test.

With a whisper of "Miruomoi no jutsu" it just took another minute to transpose the answers virtually floating before her eyes onto her test paper and she was done.

Naruto was bored.

Due to the impromptu contest between his clones he'd finished the nine regular questions on his exam some ten minutes after the proctor had told them to start. He'd been sitting here being very behaved for 20 whole minutes and he knew that if he didn't do something to occupy himself soon he would explode. A prank sounded good but he wasn't sure who to target nor how to do so.

Well, the who wasn't so hard to answer. There was that one silver-haired genin that had been talking to the rookies at the beginning of the exam. Naruto didn't trust him any further than he could move Sakura's arm when they arm wrestled. The guy smelled like snakes, had an oily tone of voice, was too friendly to people he had no reason to know or care about, and just felt generally slimy. He'd offered some information to the genin when they'd first gotten into the exam room and Sasuke, totally ignoring the possibility of misinformation, had availed himself of it. What bugged Naruto was Sasuke's targets: Naruto, Rock Lee (a genin Naruto had known in the academy during his second attempt to pass), and Gaara (a Suna genin). He could understand the Suna genin, but to ask for information on your allies like you might eventually find yourself in combat with them was incredibly rude.

Yes, that Kabuto bastard had something coming to him. Now it was just left to figure out what. Naruto preferred something that would get the genin disqualified; anyone who enabled or encouraged breaches of trust like the Uchiha's most recent one didn't deserve a command position in his opinion. A ninja had to be somewhat paranoid and a person in command of them even more so _but_ Konoha was founded on good teamwork and had carved their impressive reputation from being able to trust the ninja beside you to have your back. A leader who didn't understand that or worse disregarded that wasn't fit to lead Konoha shinobi in Naruto's opinion.

Naruto discretely dug into the pouches hanging from his belt to see what he had to work with. A piece of paper caught his attention and he grinned evilly. It was a self-made explosive tag. To most shinobi and kunoichi sealing was an exercise in copying random drawings and scribbles onto more pieces of paper with a special ink (if they delved even that far into it, it was much easier to just purchase the tags they needed) and then using them where applicable. Naruto had been trying to get past that but the lack of an instructor showed very glaringly in this discipline. In this particular case Naruto had been trying to make a more effective explosive tag.

Explosive tags were essentially reservoirs of chakra whose containment was designed to decay and eventually break after a set amount of time. The size of the explosion and how long it took was dictated by the amount of chakra pushed into the tag and the design of the seal. Naruto had noticed that the chakra wasn't converted to anything upon release and he thought that by adding a filter seal to the explosive seal that he could change the nature of the chakra being released into fire. This, he thought, would make the resulting explosion even more deadly. It didn't. Instead the tag burned like a cross between an acetylene cutting torch, an industrial road flare, and a military grade smoke grenade. It made lots of smoke, lots of heat, lots of light, but no explosion. Given, it could slag good quality kunai and he suspected it would be of great use in breaching a solid steel door; it just wasn't what he'd designed it to be and thus was a failure as far as learning to improve existing seals went.

In this instance Naruto thought that giving Kabuto the hot seat of a lifetime would be a good use for this particular prototype. He'd written down the modifications on the scroll of 'family jutsu' he kept hidden in his apartment so it wasn't like he wouldn't be able to recreate it.

It was a mere moment's work to pull out the seal, arm it, and then use his developing wind affinity to waft it gently under Kabuto's chair several rows in front of him and a half dozen seats to the left. When it went off it was both better and worse than he could have ever imagined.

Chaos

The entire room dissolved into yelling, panicking chaos.

Enemy attack, assassination attempt, someone's out to get me; just a few of the sentiments expressed at top volume.

Naruto had intended to place the tag facing down; it would have burned a hole in the floor, filled the room below with smoke, risen the temperature of Kabuto's seat by 76 degrees Celsius or so, and get him in a lot of trouble for destruction of property if he got caught. He had somehow misjudged the number of tumbles the paper had done on its' way to Kabuto's seat and it had instead landed face up.

It had gone off with a hissing roar and within a second and a half it had burned all the way through the seat. It had taken only another fraction of a second to induce third degree burns all across Kabuto's ass to match the sudden appearance of second degree burns across the back of his legs. The instinct to jump away from pain still functioned and Kabuto managed to move himself from the direct line of fire before it killed him. There was, however, no way he would be able to finish the exam and his future career as a ninja was beginning to look doubtful.

The chunin helping to proctor this section of the exam leapt to help and within seconds they had grabbed the genin and begun rushing him to the hospital. It took significantly more time to calm the rest of the genin down.

Naruto was in shock. He couldn't believe what he'd just done. He'd nearly killed someone as a _prank_. He'd killed before but it was always in a fashion that was either defending himself or others. This was just malicious humor. Over a slight that was by nearly every account very minor. He'd nearly killed someone over an insult he would have otherwise ignored if he had _anything_ else to dwell on.

His eyes caught on Sakura's and he knew by her wide eyes that she recognized his prototype explosive tag. Thankfully they weren't accusing or who knows what he might have done. She seemed to be just as shocked as he was about the devastation; after all it was one thing to see a tag reduce a training dummy to ashes in short order, it was another thing entirely to see and hear and _smell_ the results against a real, living person.

"Sit down!" the scarred examiner bellowed. It took a moment but eventually the genin quieted and took their seats. "Your profession is a very dangerous one and the rank of chunin gets you much closer to an attack like you just saw. In our world the more people who know about you the more people end up trying to kill you." Naruto guessed that he'd received orders from hidden ANBU to continue with the test. He was still very shaken about the results of his prank but intellectually Naruto knew that something similar could have happened to a notable genin for a different reason someone felt was a totally acceptable excuse to kill.

"Those of you who wish to continue towards the rank of chunin will have to decide to take the tenth question. Those of you who have seen the possible consequences of notoriety may leave now with no shame. The genin who remain to take the last question will have one chance to get it right, if they fail the question they will never have the chance to test for chunin ever again. Should you quit however, you will be taking your entire team with you. You have five minutes to decide."

Silence stretched for several seconds before the first person (who had been sitting right behind Kabuto incidentally) raised his hand. "I quit. There's no way I'm ready for this." He nearly sprinted out the door after the proctors called out his teammates names. That started the flood and soon the room was much emptier than when the exam began.

"Last chance to back out." Ibiki cautioned the remaining genin teams. "Times up, I guess I have no choice but to pass you all." All the remaining genin let out little exclamations of shock.

"So what was the deal with the tenth question?" asked a blonde girl with a Suna headband and a giant fan folded up on her back. She looked like an interesting mix of shaken, confused and belligerent.

"A chunin is the next step up in your career as ninja. It's not just about being stronger, faster or otherwise a better ninja. Once you earn that rank you will be responsible for the lives of others under your command. You will need to be able to make decisions relating to more than just yourself. The tenth question was just whether or not you would take the question. There will be times that you will not have enough information on the upcoming mission and you will be expected to lead a team into the unknown and the last question was to judge your ability to take that risk. The rest of the test was to evaluate your ability to perform a ninja's most basic duty: spying. More often than any other task, spying and acquiring information from your opponents will be the most important thing you do as a shinobi or kunoichi." The scarred man explained. He seemed like he was about to start into another lecture about ninja and their tasks but his head jerked to the side to look out a window. "Oh shit…"

The window next to him exploded in a shower of glass fragments. Keyed up as the remaining genin were a virtual hail of weaponry and a handful of jutsu were streaking towards the object that had come through the new opening even before it had landed. The genin were treated to the barest flash of a banner before it was shredded by the multitude shuriken and kunai that had been thrown and then the remains blasted through the wall by several water bullets, a blast of wind and a crackling bolt of weak lightning.

Off to the other side of the tall, foreboding examiner now stood a purple-haired woman in a very risqué outfit that seemed to start and end with a beige trench coat. Her expression could be summed up as 'what the fuck' though her unscathed escape told the genin they were _very_ outclassed regardless of her surprise at the attack.

"Jumpy bunch aren't they Ibiki? What did you do to them this time?" asked the woman as her brown eyes surveyed the teams that were left.

"There was an assassination attempt on one of the examinees earlier." This prompted a return to regarding Ibiki to judge the seriousness of the other examiner. "An unknown tag detonated and proceeded to incinerate the desk, chair and floor where the genin sat and resulted in significant third degree burns. He's still alive but you might find the rest of them rather paranoid for the duration. As you can see Anko, they didn't appreciate your typical antics." The newly identified kunoichi grunted in irritated agreement.

"Right, my name is Mitarashi Anko and I'm the head proctor for the next section of the exam. The second portion has been postponed until tomorrow at 0730 hours, presumably to investigate what our unknown assassin was trying to accomplish by roasting our genin. You will be present by 0700 at training ground 44 known locally as 'the Forest of Death' if you aren't there I will come find you when I finish explaining and starting the test and you won't like what I do to you." Threat delivered she waved dismissively at the genin and it was unanimous that they had somewhere else to be _ASAP_.

- break -

"Keep your eyes and ears sharp for anything you can find out with regards to their investigation into the explosion." Naruto told Ino.

They were outside the testing center after everyone had vacated the area. Naruto had explained that it was his explosive tag to Ino and they were now all justifiably nervous about the possible consequences Naruto might be facing. They were all going to be keeping themselves alert for any news about whether or not the ANBU or anyone had figured out that it was Naruto's doing.

Naruto privately expected that the examiners would have seen what happened. He totally expected he would soon be getting a talking to from someone of sufficiently high rank that he probably wouldn't be able to charm into a reduced punishment. He did hold out hope though that by hearing the information this catastrophe might stir up would be enough to justify his actions in light of already knowing something damning about Kabuto. Failing that, he put his hope in being able to convince the person questioning him that one of the silver-haired genin's enemies put him up to it as a prank.

He knew he'd just kicked over a hornet's nest, he just hoped that the hornets found something more deserving of a sting. His co-opting Sakura and Ino to his purpose was just in anticipation of forcing that favorable outcome.

Eventually he and Sakura bid Ino goodbye. There was much to be done and now they had some more time to do it in. They weren't going to waste it.

- break -

The Sandaime looked down at the unconscious Kabuto as the genin rested, sedated in the hospital. At first the investigators from ANBU had been at a loss as to who might wish the rather unremarkable genin dead, however, it didn't take too much digging to reveal inconsistencies. The Hokage had ordered a much more detailed investigation that had revealed the silver-haired teenager to be a very major player in a previously unknown spy ring.

A spy ring of any kind was horrible news but the Sarutobi knew in his gut that it was going to get worse. His instincts had taken him safely through two wars and countless individual conflicts; he trusted them… especially when they told him something he didn't want to hear.

The Professor now knew why his own forces might kill the genin but he was still at loss for why someone else might. This assassination attempt had revealed a rather disturbing web of threads leading a very dangerous set of spiders to his precious village. He had ordered the exam to be delayed but ultimately continued. They couldn't afford to look weak in front of the many potential clients coming to observe the finals but timing of the attempt on Kabuto's life suggested that something was going to happen during the course of the exam. He would need to pass the word around to the ANBU and some of the jonin who could be trusted to be discrete.

Inoichi, the Yamanaka clan head, had finished the mental interrogation an hour ago and even before the results were collated into a more comprehensible whole the conclusions were bad. Orochimaru was involved and that was always a horrible start.

"What can you be after now my foolish student?" he asked himself in a whisper even as he made mental plans to ensure he was still ready for whatever was to come.

- break -

Naruto was standing next to Sakura who was overlooking the work the ANBU medic-nin was doing on the female Sasuke. After the dismissal from the exam they had both headed directly back to Naruto's apartment building. From what they could understand every diagnostic was coming up that the body was real and permanent. The ANBU was just taking the body off of the drugs keeping the body unconscious to evaluate what mental aspects remained with the body.

Sakura had already finished describing her impressions about the actions of Sasuke before the switch. Naruto had agreed mostly and offered his impression of the encounter before Sakura had arrived and offered his perspective on the events Sakura and he had both been present for. Now Naruto was starting to explain the time period from the snatch till arriving at the spare apartment room.

"After the kawarimi my clone executed things got strange. My clone thought that Sasuke might be suspicious about the bindings and clothing disappearing with the clone and managed to perform the switch with the body to the exclusion of everything else. Sasuke-chan showed up with remarkable balance from such an awkward change of location. I'll admit that her showing up naked was very startling and I didn't react as quickly as I might have. She jumped at me and clung to me." Naruto chuckled a little nervously with a blush. His hand reached up to scratch the back of his head in embarrassment before he stopped himself and resumed his explanation. "She didn't say anything or try to communicate at all that I recognized. She kept trying to rub up against me and it sounded like she was trying to purr. Besides not being able to get her off me she wasn't hostile or uncooperative so I thought it best to get her back here before I tried anything else."

The three conscious shinobi thought about this for a moment in silence. Eventually Sakura offered up a theory.

"We know that Sasuke performed the switch first. Is it possible that he forced a transformation containing information on Sasuke's clone and his transformation on an animal of some sort?" she asked.

This offered food for thought to the other two.

"She does act very much like one would expect an animal might. That doesn't explain how she would be able to move as well as she can. Ninja are trained to deal with drastic adjustments to our perception of our bodies both in reaction to our own jutsu and to enemy genjutsu. An animal wouldn't be able to shift to such a different body configuration." Naruto thought aloud.

The rabbit-masked ANBU picked it up. "It's possible that the information provided from the clone template allowed the body to move unconsciously to the will of the active animal mind. The cloned personality might still exist just being suppressed by the living animal mind. We must be cautious about this line of thought though because we are beginning to twist facts to suit conclusions instead of the other way around."

A very interesting theory aside the three knew that they'd need an experienced Yamanaka to confirm that or even begin to investigate the mind. As Ino was the only Yamanaka who knew about the body they all agreed to see how much could be learned through observation before requesting more help from the Hokage and his ninja forces.

Several more minutes of conversation between the two medic-nin that totally flew over Naruto's head and Sakura and Naruto took their leave. With the rest of the afternoon to prepare for the next test they would need to scout the training area and then adjust their equipment accordingly.

* * *

AN: Here's the next installment. hope you enjoy it and don't flame me too bad for the sex scene nearly immediately out of the gate.

I've been getting some pretty good ideas from people reviewing and messaging me that have spawned new ideas and renewed my interest in writing this so keep up the good work. I'd like to claim that reviews don't make a difference in how often I write or the quality but i must admit that they do a decent job of reminding me to write occasionally and keeping me interested. that and I do enjoy reviews of course.

Enjoy,  
atom-of-ice


	15. Chapter 14

The Forest of Death was not a cheerful place. This would seem obvious from the name but the three genin standing in front of the gates to look through the fence had seen far too much of the dramatics of some ninja. They wouldn't put it past those overdramatic ninja to name the Venus flytrap that they kept in the windowsill of their bedroom 'The Annihilator'. On the other side of the village Hyuuga Neji sneezed violently.

Ino, Sakura and Naruto had been wandering around the perimeter of the training ground for the last 30 minutes trying to get a feeling for the size of the area. So far they had concluded it could be described as vast. The trees were enormous and would provide a uniquely three dimensional battleground where a threat could (and almost certainly would) come from every direction. It would be necessary to look up just as much as watching forward, behind, to the sides and where they put their feet.

Already Naruto was making plans and altering existing strategies he and Sakura had come up with in order to better fit their new environment. They would need more supplies; the trap-making possibilities of the forest were too good to pass up. There were only so many ways you could trap flat ground but the trees offered so many more. Whatever their objective they would almost certainly be able to accomplish it by leading someone into a prepared trap or by defending themselves with traps.

"Well now that I've seen that, I'm going to ask Iruka-sensei if I can use a real sword in there." Ino said. The other two nodded, it sounded like a very reasonable request to them.

"Have fun with that. I, on the other hand, am going to go back to my apartment and seal some more trap-making equipment into some scrolls for tomorrow. Then I'm going to go to bed early; I have a feeling that we won't be getting much sleep in there," said Naruto as the trio turned away from the fence and began heading back into the village center.

"You said it. I can already tell that I'm going to need more medical supplies than I have in the satchel I was going to take if there was a survival portion of the exam." Sakura added.

They casually meandered back to the village using the lesser traveled paths between training grounds. So much time spent avoiding notice had ingrained some habits even when they weren't trying to avoid people. Ino split away before they got away from the training grounds to ask for permission from Iruka for using a real blade instead of her wooden practice one. Sakura and Naruto walked together to Sakura's house but Naruto continued to his apartment without going up to the door so he wouldn't cause a scene with her parents.

-o0o- break -o0o-

Sarutobi surveyed the wreckage of the hospital room he was standing in with a sigh. He'd predicted that someone would come to silence Kabuto but he did think that an A-rank fire jutsu was a little overkill. The place was mostly ashes and scorched concrete. There was some misshapen metal in the center of the room that was once a gurney. Some more equipment along the sides of the room was totally unsalvageable even with how robustly they were constructed (even built with shinobi in mind they were still mostly plastic slag remains).

Thankfully this wasn't his first time holding a valuable information asset and Kabuto was nowhere near the hospital. All that the fire had managed to do was scare a couple of ANBU (which given that they were guarding a person of interest they should have been ready for an attack) and torch a cadaver hooked up to a bunch of medical equipment. It appeared that he had been correct in thinking that there were a great many security holes in the administrative staff who worked the Hokage tower. This along with his easily spooked ANBU would need to be remedied soon.

It was now painfully obvious that Konoha was on the cusp of violence; he didn't know it if would be full war but the signs were there. Sarutobi felt he was getting too old for this type of stuff. He just knew that those geriatric fools that he once called teammates would get a hold of this incident and it would be a headache for him. Not to mention all those other interlopers who presumed themselves helpful to the process of governing Konoha.

_Nothing for it but to tighten the screws,_ thought Sarutobi, thinking of Kabuto. The genin had proven remarkably resilient and as soon as he regained consciousness, aided by stimulants of all kinds, he'd started a jutsu that allowed him to begin regenerating his injured flesh. He might reflect that showing his interrogators that trick was a bad idea but Sarutobi was aquiver with excitement over possibly learning that technique. He had a fair few old injuries that were still bothering him and there would probably be some fighting soon; he might meet it in something analogous to top form after all.

-o0o- break -o0o-

Naruto wondered if Anko had ever gone to sleep last night. She looked much too chipper and awake to have woken up in time to be at the training ground before he got there himself at 0630. He suspected that the only way the purple-haired psychopath was in such a good mood was that she'd been having sex all night and into the morning. She could not possibly be this happy about the prospect of tormenting teenagers.

Naruto wasn't the first one to be at the training ground and, as the three others who were there, were all on the same team from a foreign village he suspected that they'd just camped outside the training ground after they'd found it yesterday. _Brave of them, _Naruto thought, _I would have thought the possibility of someone like Anko waking them up would have convinced them to set up in a neighboring training ground._

Other teams, and parts of teams, began trickling in to the field that Anko had chosen to use. A couple chunin from yesterday's test showed up with a couple backpacks and began setting up a tent off to the side of the clearing. Minutes later, some more chunin showed up and took positions as guards at the corners of the tent. That really piqued Naruto's curiosity, enough so that he didn't notice Sakura walk up beside him.

"What do you think is in the tent?" she asked. Naruto couldn't help his little jump of surprise which earned him a delicately raised eyebrow from the pinkette.

"I dunno, but if it's got guards then it's probably part of our next stage," answered Naruto. Now he was on the lookout for Ino, if she snuck up on him there would be no living with her for weeks. He noticed that she was walking into the clearing just then with her teammates. She'd probably been the one to get them there on time, now that Naruto thought about it. Shikamaru was lazy enough to just decline to attend the second portion of the test. He imagined that Ino would be pushing her whole team through this little party.

Actually, now that Naruto thought about it, depending on the task, Sakura and he might not even see Ino until this stage of the exam was over. Naruto frowned about that. He'd gotten so used to the three of them doing everything together these last several weeks it was rather disappointing to relearn that there were still on very different teams.

The clearing was getting steadily more crowded and people were coming faster as the deadline approached, no one it seemed was willing to test Anko's threat. Even Sasuke, arrogant as he was, didn't look to be ready to cross a bloodthirsty psychopath; he sauntered over towards Naruto and Sakura a couple minutes before 0700.

"Scared yet dobe?" sneered Sasuke. Naruto reflected that the longer Sasuke stayed in Konoha the more of an asshole he became. He wondered if it was constipation because the ass-kissers wouldn't leave him alone long enough to use the commode. He recognized that his hopes for Sasuke after their last mission were probably unreasonably high but he'd really been looking forward to working with someone with as much natural talent as Sasuke who he didn't detest and exchange insults with all the time. Regardless of the reason, Sasuke had grown arrogant and irritating once again. Looking at it from a positive perspective Naruto knew that he wouldn't be nearly as motivated to move up in rank if he didn't have such a compelling reason to leave his genin team.

"No, although I suppose that could change as the day goes on," allowed Naruto. "As long as I'm able to do what's necessary I suppose it doesn't matter though, does it?"

Sasuke looked a little off kilter at that answer. He'd obviously expected Naruto to deny ever being afraid. The answer did keep him quiet until Anko started explaining this part of the chunin exam, so in that respect it was doubtless the best answer Naruto could have given.

-o0o-

"Alright, eyes forward and ears clear brats! Behind me is training ground 44 'the Forest of Death'. As you might expect, it's full of all sorts of nasty critters and vicious animals. You're all going to be spending a fun filled week in there so I'm sure you'll be able to experience all the fun!" crowed Anko. Her smile disturbed nearly every examinee there and a great many of the foreign villages were revising their opinions on exactly how soft leaf-nin were. If they kept places like this around and called them training grounds they might not be as weak and soft as their instructors had led them to believe. "You will be given a scroll, one per team, which will be one part of a pair. You will not open your scroll! We will know if you do and do horribly unspeakable things to you if you open it before it's time to do so, this is supposed to simulate a test of your trustworthiness but I would take it as a personal favor if you would ignore those instructions. Your job is to find another team in the forest with a corresponding scroll and to take it from them. You may use any means you like to do this… SO, I will be needing all of you to sign a waiver that states that your next of kin cannot come bitching to me when you die, horribly disfigured, in there."

There was some nervous shifting in the crowd, already much smaller than the starting crowd yesterday. With such a close brush with death still fresh in their minds even the more bloodthirsty villages' teams were reluctant to enter a field where death was part and parcel of the test.

"For those of you too stupid to figure it out, that means that there will be less than half of you left at the end of this test." Anko seemed delighted at the prospect. "The reason that I know most of you will totally fail at this, is that your entire team needs to make it to the tower in the center of the training ground with both scrolls to pass. This isn't just survival of the fittest but survival of the fittest, weakest link."

Now there were questioning glances made between teammates, not just looking at the other teams around them. Anko was really playing off the nervous tension of the assembled genin. _If she gets any worst, _Naruto speculated, _someone is going to have a breakdown._

"Once you have your waivers filled out for your entire team, one, I repeat, _one_ of you will come to the tent and exchange three completed waivers for either an Earth or a Heaven scroll. If you're not a bunch of total retards, you'll hide it before you get out of the tent," the last was mumbled at a near whisper and Naruto doubted than many people caught that last bit of advice. Granted it was fairly obvious, but it did give the blond the idea to watch the teams exiting the tent to see if they'd reveal their scroll. _Probably a good idea to get Sakura to look too in case they get smart and put a genjutsu on it to show the wrong one; thin out the competition some while they look for a match._

"Sakura, you should check to see if anyone comes out of that tent with their scroll visible. We might get lucky and be able to mark a particular team instead of just guessing. Be sure to check for genjutsu though, wouldn't want to get into a fight we don't need to." Sasuke snorted to the last bit.

"Why should we care? We're stronger than any of these teams here; I alone am enough to beat most of these teams." Naruto wasn't sure he should be glad that Sasuke was allowing that he couldn't do the whole task on his own, or despair over the overflowing arrogance in disregarding caution. "The more of these teams that we defeat in the forest the easier the later parts of the exam will be."

"While correct in that teams beaten here won't be a problem for us later, I'd rather have full chakra and no injuries than just knocking out a couple more teams. The examiners are pitting us against each other in stages, we don't know how many more there are but if we keep getting cut by half there could be a lot more. Look around, there are still quite a few teams and we know from what happened yesterday that all these teams are the hardcore genin. They are going to be the best of their villages and that means it's very likely we'd get hurt or really have to work to knock out some of these teams."

"We can set traps around the tower once we've gotten our scroll, right before we finish," offered Sakura which seemed to mollify Sasuke.

The waivers eventually came to them; Naruto had already marked a team with each type of scroll by using his special eyes to see through the minor genjutsu covering their revealed scrolls. Sakura left to get their own scroll from the examiners. When she came back there was no evidence to her having it anywhere on her.

"Where is the scroll?" hissed Sasuke quietly to Sakura.

"Hidden," Sakura hissed back. "I'll tell you which one we have when we get into the forest. We don't want the others to hear." Sasuke seemed a little taken aback at the implied 'stupid' tacked onto the end of Sakura's statement.

-o0o- break -o0o-

Team 7 waited impatiently at the gate they'd been assigned. By some stroke of ill fortune the teams they had scoped out for scroll types were at the opposite end of the training ground so they would be attacking whichever team they ran across until they got the correct scroll anyway. Their plan to avoid unnecessary fighting was worthless already.

This wasn't horrible by any designation; Naruto just hoped that unlucky circumstances wouldn't set the tone for the rest of this stage. Misfortune was never a pleasant reoccurring theme.

When the light above the gate turned on and the buzzer sounded they rushed into the forest tracking right in order to intercept the team whose entrance was nearest to them.

-o0o- break -o0o-

"That could have gone worse," opinioned Naruto looking at the unconscious Ame-nin at their feet.

In an attempted ambush by the rain-nin, the hunters found that the prey had sharper teeth and bigger claws. Team 7 had tracked right as quickly as possible and managed to put themselves right in front of the team they were targeting. Rather than attempt to surprise a group of ninja that worked in near zero visibility almost constantly, they allowed the other team to ambush them.

Naruto had placed a deliberate hole in their impromptu traps as they staged an argument about who would carry the scroll for the rest of the week. Like sharks scenting blood, the Ame-nin jumped through the hole and straight into the teeth of Sakura's paralytic Doku Gasu no Jutsu. Jutsu choice probably wasn't the most well thought out as they were perhaps the only team in the exam wearing re-breathers but it was a contact poison as well as working through the lungs, so the ninja did drop - it just took them a couple seconds.

Now they were lying side-by-side, unconscious after Naruto had searched them for their scroll. It had been a Heaven scroll which was a duplicate of the one Sakura already had. It wasn't what they were looking for but it had its uses, not the least of which was as a backup.

"Not what we're looking for but not a complete failure I suppose. Let's tie these guys to the fence; maybe that will disqualify them and even if it doesn't it will lessen the chances they come back after us later." Sakura nodded and Sasuke grunted (which Naruto interpreted as an affirmative).

A quick trip back to the edge of the training ground and another quick search of the enemies' pockets produced enough ninja wire to tie them up without having to use their own supplies. Then it was time for another plan.

"We aren't a tracking team so wandering around the forest until we find another team is wasteful. Better for us to stake out something in here that teams are going to be frequently passing," suggested Naruto.

"Not the tower," interrupted Sakura before Sasuke could suggest it. "The area around the tower is going to be a mad-house of traps and waiting teams at this point. Anyone who starts a fight around there is going to end up having another half-dozen teams coming down on them like a ton of bricks hoping to scavenge the correct scroll."

"Why not the river?" asked Sasuke. "All the teams will eventually need to refill their canteens and the river is the only place to do that unless it rains."

"That might work," allowed Naruto. "The problem would be the Kiri teams. We know there are still a couple left and they are likely to dominate any environment where there is plentiful water. I don't know any water jutsu and I'm not sure I've got anything that can block them effectively either."

"Then learn to dodge, dobe. It's our only good option: we know the other teams will come to it at some point, it's big enough to make meeting the Kiri teams unlikely, it's a stationary point so we can set more elaborate traps, and if we camp away from it and just patrol it we can minimize the risk."

It was a good plan; they all agreed that it had the best chance of success so they took their bearings as best they could and headed towards where they thought the river was.

-o0o- break -o0o-

They had found the river before nightfall the day before and had camped out of sight and up in a tree. It was unlikely that anyone not from Konoha would think to look there and they doubted that even those from Konoha would be able to camp where they did.

It was just past noon and so far day two was looking to be as much of a dud as day one. There had only been a single ninja that had come to the river within their sight and it was a Konoha-nin. They'd voted not to follow him back and attack his team (Naruto and Sakura overruling Sasuke). They mollified Sasuke's bitching by leaving open the option to attack fellow leaf-nin later in the week if they still hadn't gotten a scroll. They were lying through their teeth but it did keep the emo quiet, which was the goal.

That all changed as they were moving through the trees parallel to the river.

A huge gust of wind tore through the branches and unbalanced Team 7. A hidden wind bullet slammed into Naruto and threw him through the trees to separate the genin.

-o0o-

Naruto landed heavily, but on his feet. It was a good thing he did as he would have never been able to dodge the huge flexible cylinder that thundered to the ground where he'd been standing moments before.

He jumped back and frantically bounced from tree to tree in order to get the higher ground once more. The seconds he bought himself in jumping away allowed him to see what he was up against.

An enormous snake.

If he hadn't been in the middle of an official rank test he'd be looking for Anko and apologizing frantically for whatever he'd done to piss her off. As it was he knew she would never do anything so unprofessional where it could negatively impact the image of Konoha (sure she scared the crap out of a bunch of genin but that actually enhanced the Leaf's reputation and was totally within the rules - a summoned snake wreaking havoc… not so much).

The thing that worried him, beyond there being a 20 meter snake after him, was that he didn't know who would have summoned a snake. After he'd signed the monkey contract, Sarutobi had gone over the summons that Konoha laid claim to and the snakes were one of them. Anko would never allow anyone to sign the contract if she didn't personally teach them and the council has thus far forbidden her from having any students. That left a single person: Orochimaru, the traitor Sannin as the only known snake summoner.

This was very, very, very, bad.

This was running out of ramen bad.

There was a hostile S-rank missing-nin somewhere messing with the exam. There was nothing good that could come of that. Naruto was inclined to think it even worse because said ninja was apparently targeting him or his team. This was not good.

-o0o-

Back with Sasuke and Sakura, an unknown ninja had just appeared before the two of them, alone by all appearances. Her hitai-ite denoted that she was from Grass. She was wearing a beige tunic with a black bodysuit on underneath it, tied around her waist was a thick purple rope worked into a huge upside-down bow in the back. She also had a straw hat on but she'd quickly discarded it allowing them to see her forehead protector.

Sasuke was somewhat shocked having gotten ambushed so successfully but he was also eager to get into a fight with someone so skilled.

Sakura was worried. She hadn't sensed that jutsu until it was nearly on top of them and she'd only had enough warning to stick her feet to the branch she was on and brace for impact. Her chakra sense was also going haywire around the kunoichi who'd just appeared. The girl's chakra was vile and almost totally suppressed. That meant that this person was very skilled, in all probability out of their league. She knew that Sasuke would want to fight and all she could do at this point was hope that Naruto got back quickly.

-o0o-

Naruto was having problems.

Really big, scaly problems that slithered around altogether too quickly and could take surprisingly vicious hits.

Thankfully, enormous, scaled, summoned snake did not mean invulnerable. The snake was bleeding pretty badly after getting a modified Great Breakthrough technique right to the face, but it was still in the fight.

The snake struck again and the branch Naruto was standing on was converted to splinters moments after Naruto vacated it. The snake spun, tracking the blonde's leap, and struck again while Naruto was still in midair. He saw it coming and wrenched out one of his tanto while using the wires on his opposite hand to guide him.

The bait was prepared, the snake took it, would it see the hook in time?

Naruto jerked up higher into the air just as the snake's head passed through where he'd been. Naruto landed on the reptile's head and clung there with chakra. He just needed to stay on for a moment. He threw himself down on his stomach and slammed the knife home…

…right into the snake's eye…

…while channeling wind chakra through the blade.

The snake dispersed instantly when the sharp-natured chakra threatened to frappe its brain. As soon as his feet hit the ground Naruto was sprinting back towards his teammates. A single snake was not a serious attempt on a ninja's life, even a genin who could be expected to outrun it, which meant that the real threat was aimed at Sasuke and Sakura.

-o0o-

"Kukuku, how amusing you are Sasuke-kun. Is this the best that Konoha can do?" hissed the kunoichi he'd been attacking. The childish taunts were much more effective when the person delivering them was standing on a huge snake.

Things had not been going well for him in this fight. Soon after the kunoichi had shown up she'd started leaking the most terrifying killing intent he'd ever felt. It was so bad it had frozen him where he stood. If Sakura hadn't called out to him who knows what he might have done to get out of it, or even _if _he would have gotten out of it.

The kunoichi had done some really melodramatic trick with swallowing her scroll, as if they were going to kill her and dig it out of her torso. That was gross and they really didn't need a scroll that bad.

Sasuke had opened the ball with his Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu hoping to block the ninja's vision while he set up for something better. He didn't count on the girl standing there and walking through the fireball like it was a warm breeze though.

After that he'd had to up his game. A series of phoenix fireballs hiding shuriken was his next move. This time the kunoichi dodged, knowing somehow that the fireballs contained something sharp. The wires strung between the shuriken did their job however and he soon had the ninja lashed to a tree trunk.

The momentary sensation of victory was all too brief. The girl had promptly melted into mud, shocking the two genin, and Sasuke barely had time to dodge the giant snake that had been striking from behind him.

This brought them back to where the kunoichi had started taunting them. Sasuke noted that being a great ninja didn't make you good at insulting someone - probably the lack of receiving taunts and insults meant they lacked the necessary background for it Sasuke guessed.

-o0o-

Sakura was trying not to draw attention to herself. After seeing the giant snake, she'd determined that this was now a very serious threat. One didn't summon a primarily deadly animal if they were looking to subdue someone long enough to rob them. One didn't summon at all unless they were absurdly overpowered or looking to do some serious damage - well that and to combat other super-powerful shinobi which Sasuke and her were distinctly not.

Now that she'd established that the other kunoichi was fighting to kill, the kid gloves could come off. She didn't want to reveal all her cards but having an ace up your sleeve is only good if you use it to win an otherwise losing hand.

Currently she was suppressing her chakra and attempting to fade into the background. She wasn't trying to hide as she was sure that any aggressive action from her would be noticed by the other ninja; including actions that would merely set up future aggressive action. But she had noticed that the other kunoichi seemed fixated on Sasuke which meant that his pink-haired teammate had a prime opportunity to shift the balance of power. If she could surprise the enemy kunoichi at just the right moment, she could probably force the other girl to take an injury.

Now it boiled down to the rather complicated issue of making sure the person she helped injure was not another clone, using the right distraction to best facilitate a hit, and maximizing the damage done. This was a fight for their lives and killing the black-haired girl was right up there among the best resolutions of this fight.

-o0o-

The quick pause in the fight was over and Sasuke launched a barrage of kunai when he saw the grass-nin move. He was already flashing through handseals even as the snake shifted to the side to avoid the kunai.

"Katon: Kari Fenikkusu!" screamed Sasuke as he exhaled a huge burning bird. He guided it at the kunoichi and at the last moment before she could dodge he detonated it early.

The blast knocked the black-haired girl from the snake's head and dazed the summoned creature long enough for Sakura to plant a couple kunai into its forehead hard enough to dispel it. Noticing the kunoichi's support had left, Sasuke turned to track the summoner.

The kunoichi had landed gracefully on a branch after her brief tumble through the air. She was now laughing as if she'd just seen something incredibly funny, totally throwing Sakura and Sasuke off their game. She'd just been in the midst of an explosion; you weren't supposed to laugh about that.

"Yes, that's much better Sasuke-kun," she said. She lifted her face and both genin gasped at the sight. Her face was scorched and it appeared to actually be melting off. She lifted her hand to wipe it away revealing a totally different face. "Oh, look at that. You've actually managed to get through my little disguise."

The girl, now apparently male, suddenly shifted his face to a serious look and jabbed his hand at Sasuke. A half-dozen snakes appeared from nowhere, shooting out of his sleeve, and attempted to bite the young Uchiha. Sasuke began dodging, flipping, and jumping away; trying desperately to avoid the probably poisonous projectiles.

In the midst of a back flip, the teen grabbed a kunai in each hand and began lopping the heads off the snakes as they came at him. He finished his acrobatics panting but snake and snakebite free. He needed to finish this fight before it went on too long. He was running out of options and those options were decreasing as he used up more energy.

_He can somehow disrupt my jutsu when they hit him, _thought Sasuke, _but he's not immune to the collateral damage. The explosion hit him when I set it off early, he had to dodge the fire when there were shuriken in it, and I was able to catch him with the wire for a bit. My best bet would be to catch him on the edge of a lot of stuff by surrounding him with it._ Plan formed, Sasuke jumped back into the fight.

-o0o-

Sakura noticed that Sasuke probably had a plan now. She'd noticed the same things he did, though she didn't know that, and she'd come to a similar conclusion albeit a different solution. The man was incredibly skilled, to be able to disrupt the effects of a jutsu upon one's self indicated chakra control and jutsu knowledge that far exceeded anything a genin would know. They would need help. Their only chance of making it out alive, whatever else Sasuke thought they could do with his plan, would be to get help and stall the other ninja until it arrived.

To that end, she wrapped three flash tags around a kunai and tied a red smoke bomb to the ring. The smoke bomb would be lit once the first flash tag went off, she'd set up the tags to go off after short pauses between them. She hoped that someone would see it and respond. She knew that three flashes was a distress signal but the point of the exercise was to put genin teams in distressing circumstances so the proctors might not respond.

She primed the tags and launched the kunai straight up with enough power to easily clear the treetops.

Now she needed to help Sasuke.

The ninja's ability to shrug off ninjutsu meant that she could rule out genjutsu being effective. If he had the skill to disrupt a physical manifestation of chakra the more unstable mental manifestations would be child's play to this man. That left the purely physical. She didn't think she was fast enough to land a hit on him, the short sparring session she'd seen Sasuke exchange with the imposter had been enough to show that the man's speed was too far beyond her. She might be able to use a projectile though.

She pulled out several shuriken and a couple kunai in preparation. Once Sasuke masked the ninja's sight enough with his fire techniques she'd be able to tag him.

She watched as Sasuke continued his furious and wildly aerobic taijutsu match with the snake-user. It was clear to her that he was outclassed but Sasuke hadn't been able to disengage yet. The man had closed the distance when it looked like Sasuke would be throwing out more jutsu. So far only Sasuke's Sharingan had allowed him to avoid getting hurt.

Finally the man let Sasuke go. Her teammate jumped back already flashing through the seals of his Katon: Housenka and the fireballs left his mouth at an incredible rate.

The fireballs weren't aimed to hit the ninja but to surround him and leave no easy way out. The imposter obliged Sasuke by playing into the obvious tactic and stayed in the center of the circle of fire.

Sasuke used the opportunity to detonate all the fireballs at once while they were surrounding his opponent.

Sakura took her chance as soon as she realized that the ninja wasn't going to move. She channeled a burst of chakra into her right arm and hurled a kunai as hard and as fast as she possibly could, aided by the chakra reinforcing her muscles.

There was a sharp staccato of cracks as the kunai passed through the ninja's torso and a dozen tree branches and trunks behind him.

She suddenly felt the man's vile chakra right behind her and she barely turned before she was backhanded off the branch she was crouched on. She flew a not inconsiderable distance to slam back first into another tree trunk, from there she fell belly down onto a thick branch below.

Dazed she tried to stand, get up off her stomach, anything so that she could dodge the next strike.

Her mind was clouded with pain, she was dizzy, and seeing stars. Idly she realized that she almost certainly had a concussion from the hit. Still trying to right herself she heard him speaking.

"That is a very interesting jutsu, my dear," he chuckled. "I'm something of a jutsu collector, you see, and I don't believe I've ever seen its like before. I might be convinced to be more forgiving about you destroying my mud clone if you told me how you did it."

"I very much doubt that," she slurred. At least she was on her feet she thought. Even swaying as she was, it was better than dying lying at someone's feet.

He burst out laughing at her response.

"You are a smart girl. Too bad," he said with a grin as he formed a half-seal with one hand.

-o0o-

Naruto had just arrived in time to see Sakura backfisted a good nine meters into a tree. As far as he was concerned that guy had just signed his death warrant. He had to hold himself back from rushing in though. He didn't know how strong this guy was and if he was manhandling his teammates even after Sakura pulled out her super-strength then he was probably someone Naruto normally didn't want to mess with.

The rapid crackling he'd heard earlier he was sure was one of Sakura's kunai transiting the space through several solid trees and that meant he would need to take this guy seriously. He had to take a deep breath and come up with a plan.

_Fuck that!_ He thought when he saw the enemy ninja forming a seal and Sakura swaying drunkenly in front of him.

He lanced a chakra spike through the master seal that linked his restrictor seal, resistance seal and illusion seal. In the same moment he flew through the handseals for Kaze: Daitoppa; adding an extra two half seals at the end, one for each hand. He hadn't tested this modified version of the great breakthrough technique yet but the theory was sound and he'd never been so concentrated on a jutsu going just right.

His chakra built up into his lungs and as he exhaled between his hands, still holding the half-seals, the chakra-laced winds began to swirl into a drill-like shape and explode forward as a concentrated cylinder instead of a widespread blast of bladed wind.

The result was a blender/drill-like column of air that jetted directly at the ninja threatening Sakura.

-o0o-

Sakura was astonished when she felt Naruto's chakra spike. She noticed that the imposter jerked his head towards where she felt Naruto was. A split second later a watermelon sized, shrieking beam of visibly churning air shredded the ninja in front of her.

She noticed that the enemy ninja had escaped even that however, when she noticed that the expected gore was turning into sawdust as it got further from the black-haired imposter.

-o0o-

Naruto saw the brief flicker in the image of the ninja signifying a kawarimi and he cut off his jutsu.

He swiveled his head around rapidly, forcing chakra to his eyes as he tried to locate his wily opponent. He'd been able to switch out with less than a half-second of notice: this was a very skilled shinobi.

-o0o-

Orochimaru was swearing explosively in the confines of his mind. This was not going right!

At first it was going according to plan: separate the unskilled powerhouse from his prey to keep the prey fighting without backup, scare the girl to keep her as a spectator - too wary to contribute to Sasuke fighting. Then it all seemed to fall apart.

Sasuke was proving to be a worthy future host body; he was already using high-level fire jutsu and using them creatively (he would be a good minion in the intervening time before Orochimaru would use the body himself). Then while he was watching his mud clone sparring with the boy, the girl used some jutsu to fling a kunai faster and harder than he'd ever seen one go, even his former too-strong teammate hadn't been able to get projectiles moving that fast.

He'd wanted to know how she'd destroyed his clone so he'd gone over to ask her. Predictably she'd proven resistant to tell him, but he couldn't allow that kind of technique to become widespread in a village he was trying to destroy. Then as he'd been about to ensure that she'd never pass that technique on (he wasn't going to kill her: Sasuke-kun needed her to pass this portion of the test after all)…

…a column of absolutely hellishly destructive wind had nearly speared him. Just from what he could tell by being near the technique it would qualify as A-rank at least. A wind technique's destructive qualities which some enterprising jutsu creator had taken and paired with lightning's typical ability to reach out and hit someone before they could dodge; it was exceptional. If he'd been any slower to switch out, he might have needed to shed his skin to repair the damage and that was totally unacceptable. Who was teaching these genin? (Elsewhere in the village Kakashi suddenly felt like he should have sneezed just then)

_Enough playing around,_ he growled to himself.

-o0o-

Naruto was still wrestling his full chakra under his control when Orochimaru made his reappearance. He barely caught a flicker in the corner of his vision and he instantly replaced himself with a log.

The log he left behind was incinerated by a fireball that better resembled a meteor than something as insubstantial as pure fire.

Another flicker was all the warning he had before more snakes burst from the foliage around him. Naruto spun in place as they converged upon him, holding his hands in a knife-hand strike he coated them in wind-natured chakra to make them sharp as the keenest of swords.

The snakes dissipated into smoke once Naruto had removed their heads using something that looked like a bastardized Hyuuga Kaiten. On instinct he struck directly behind him with another slashing strike, following it up with a sweeping roundhouse kick.

As his eyes followed his spin he managed to catch sight of the pale shinobi jumping back after an aborted strike to his back. Trying to gain the initiative Naruto followed the retreat, pulling both of his tanto to get in close.

In a display of inhuman flexibility, the ninja dodged Naruto's strikes and swept the blonde's feet out from under him. His charge stopped by the split-second pause to regain his footing, Naruto found himself frantically redirecting the pale ninja's kunai. They bounced from tree branch to tree branch, clashing tanto against kunai as they sought to end each other.

Naruto was steadily increasing the amount of chakra he was pumping into his limbs to achieve greater and greater speeds. To the observers the two fighters looked like a set of blurs flashing across branches and bounding over gaps reappearing only as blinks.

As quick as the exchange had begun it was over. So far every contact had lasted no longer than a couple seconds but Naruto was already breathing harder than he ever had in a spar or exercise session. This was a level beyond any he'd ever experienced or heard about.

Another flicker caught his eyes. Before he could react he jackknifed around the fist that was suddenly planted in his stomach. His tanto went spinning from his hands at the force of the impact. There was some sort of chakra infused into the blow that was interfering with his tetsusukin. His breath whooshed out of his lungs.

His vision began to grey out. He struggled to maintain consciousness.

Darkness enveloped him.

-o0o-

Orochimaru smirked. As he expected, as soon as he added another seal on top of the one holding the Kyuubi the boy dropped. He acknowledged that the boy had some skill to be able use the jutsu he had but in the end he'd only been able to keep up due to his demonic tenant.

Unfortunately he was now out of time. The signal the girl had sent coupled with the high chakra usage was drawing the ANBU.

-o0o-

Sakura managed to catch Naruto as he fell out of the branches above her. She was simultaneously scared stiff, impressed, and awed. The fight she'd just seen was incredible; she'd barely been able to keep up just watching it happen, never mind actually operating at that speed.

She noticed the imposter start to move again. She hoped someone was near enough to stop him should he come after them again. She could feel chakra signatures closing in fast; she prayed they would be fast enough.

Instead of jumping down to finish her and Naruto off, he jumped towards Sasuke.

Sasuke panicked a little and let loose a Katon: Ryuuka right at the oncoming shinobi. The pale nin merely swept his hand through it releasing enough chakra to distort the air and destabilize Sasuke's blast of fire. The formerly blazing fire seemed to shiver and convert to harmless, thick, black smoke. She couldn't see very well from this angle but it seemed like the imposter's neck elongated and he bit Sasuke on the base of his neck and shoulder.

Task apparently completed he dropped down in front of her.

"Tell Sasuke-kun that Orochimaru offers him a great gift. He will seek me out when he realizes how much Konoha is holding him back." The shinobi, Orochimaru her mind supplied, looked past her at where she could feel the strongest chakra signatures coming from. "Also tell the ANBU to inform Sarutobi that the exam will continue or I will start a massacre that the leaf will never forget."

With those parting words he disappeared in a Shunshin.

-o0o- break -o0o-

When the ANBU had shown up Sakura had delivered the message. It had been like she'd kicked over an anthill. It had taken hours to get a consensus on what should be done; ANBU kept running back and forth between her, the proctors, and the Hokage trying to figure out if the threat was real and what should be done about it.

Sakura had spent much of the intervening time trying to heal her teammates as much as possible. Eventually the decision came down that she would need to take care of her teammates and attempt to complete the test. Orochimaru was obviously interested in the Uchiha so he might make good on his threat should the Uchiha be pulled from the exam even if the rest of the test went on.

Sakura had relocated to the hollow at the base of a tree away from the river. Their previous spot had become unusable. With only her able to climb the tree and anticipating having to leave them at some point to get food or water, she needed a place with limited access that she could place tons of traps over.

Around midnight that night Naruto had woken up long enough to keep watch for a couple hours while Sakura got some sleep. He'd told her that whatever Orochimaru had done to him had messed with his chakra; even reactivating his seals didn't make it substantially easier to control.

Sasuke still slept and he'd developed a fever for a while from whatever was done to him. Sakura recognized the classic signs of poisoning but there wasn't much she could do. She didn't have the training or equipment to deal with an advanced poison backed up by some kind of complex delivery seal. She did know that the seal would need to be broken to even begin removing the poison but since that wasn't going to happen her hands were tied. All she could do was crush up an aspirin into some water and make him drink it, to reduce his fever and any pain.

-o0o-

This test was already going so badly that she wasn't surprised at all when her perimeter alarm was tripped around noon of their third day in the forest. She did wonder if they would make it all the way into the clearing however.

It should be noted that Sakura had been at the top of the academy in theoretical knowledge. It should also be noted that trap-setting was covered in exhausting detail as part of that curriculum she so excelled in. Combine these things with her close relationship to Konoha's number one prankster whose pranks were reliant almost entirely on traps of various kinds and it is hardly surprising that the approach to the tree Team 7 was sheltering in was possibly the deadliest single section of forest in the entire training ground.

The night before, Sakura had combated her feelings of uselessness by setting up a plethora of traps to protect her injured comrades. It might have been petty of her but she'd decided that anyone who messed with Team 7 after the day they'd had would need to walk through a field of lethal traps to get to them.

Several explosions and sounds of heavy objects impacting each other later and three very ragged looking genin from Oto were arrayed in the small clearing in front of the tree Team 7 was in. Sakura decided that she might as well rub the misery in so she stepped out of the tree to face them.

"Good afternoon, you're all looking chipper," she greeted, snickering a little to herself. "You all didn't think the explosions were a good indication we weren't interested in meeting anyone right now?"

The Oto-nins glared at her something fierce. Sakura just smiled wider. She'd give them credit for making it through the traps but after facing an S-rank missing-nin, genin seemed like small potatoes. They were a very disreputable bunch she thought but it came across more like kids playing dress up than the intimidation they were probably going for.

The hunchback started to speak. He was nearly dragging his hands across the ground he was so bent over; on his back was some puffy, furry, cape-like thing; his face was entirely wrapped in bandages except for one eye; one of his arms looked thicker than the other though he tried his best to cover that by sewing an extra sleeve to the ends of the ones already attached to his shirt. Sakura decided to call him Quasimodo.

"Tell the Uchiha to come out," demanded Quasimodo. "We have business with him."

"Yeah, of a lethal nature," snickered Quasimodo's sycophant. He was a very thin kind of guy, wearing headgear in addition to his hitai-ite. _Probably for his own protection,_ Sakura thought, _he looks like someone who just escaped off the funny farm._ They were all three wearing some completely impractical camouflage that she imagined would break up their outline if it weren't white and purple. Purple might work in dark environments but not when it's paired with white. Sycophant's shirt showed his obsession with the morbid, really a shirt that kept repeating the kanji for death was just in bad taste.

The girl had so far proven she was the brains of the outfit by not speaking but Sakura thought that might change. She was dressed in the same camouflage pants and scarf as the other two, her incredibly long hair reached down to her knees were it was tied together in a purple ribbon. She was wearing a green vest that appeared to have several pockets on it for her gear.

Sakura supposed that she'd seen enough to move on to the fight. She supposed that they deserved a verbal response for all the trouble they went to.

"Nope, as his agent in these matters I've decided that it is in Uchiha-kun's best interests to consolidate his business in Konoha before be begins looking abroad for other investment opportunities."

The Oto genin looked like she'd slapped them with a fresh trout.

"Wha…" muttered the girl. "You can't really think we were talking about actual business."

"No, I'm not an idiot," responded Sakura in a condescending tone. "I just thought that it might be nice to avoid a fight. I was trying to be funny to encourage you to be reasonable, obviously it didn't work. I suppose we will be fighting now."

-o0o-

The sound genin had totally lost their groove. They were very unsure about this pink-haired kunoichi. She seemed, to them, to be both very rational and bat-shit crazy at the same time. Talking casually with a group of people who've made it clear that they wish to kill her teammate was not something they were used to or had even contemplated happening ever.

They did have their orders though and they were very clear about the condition of the Uchiha at the end of the exam. They could see some figures lying inside the cave formed by the tree's roots so they needed to get past the pinkette to accomplish their mission.

This suited sycophant (Zaku) just fine, he liked going through obstacles rather than around them.

Suiting deeds to mood he jumped forward to remove the kunoichi.

-o0o-

Sakura found herself a little eager for this fight. She puzzled on that for a bit while the sound genin hesitated. When sycophant rushed forward, she attributed it to her frustration at not being more helpful during the fight with Orochimaru. Konoha was always adding hype on the notion of teamwork: by working in teams you can accomplish more than just the sum of your skills, and other like-minded phrases. She knew intellectually that the fight wouldn't have gone any better had she contributed more but she couldn't get her heart and head to reach a consensus.

Absently she noted the buildup of chakra in sycophant's arms.

She'd really wanted to help Naruto yesterday. He'd done basically all the work and he shouldn't have to. Sasuke was getting played with but her spectacular ascension in skill should have mattered more. All she'd done was to throw a couple of kunai; anyone could do that as far as she was concerned. Maybe not as hard as she did, but it wasn't much as far as contributions went.

She saw some strange hardware imbedded in sycophant's palms. Were they something for him to assist with his jutsu or to channel jutsu through?

She really needed to work on her taijutsu. She had all this strength and she couldn't do anything more than throw stuff with it because she couldn't catch anyone unless they were already in her grasp. As soon as this test was over she resolved to find a taijutsu teacher. This standing in the back was no longer tolerable.

She noted that sycophant was far enough across the clearing. She sent a burst of chakra through the string she had hidden in her hand. Three storage seals, modified to hold gas, released a psychotropic gas made to induce powerful, calming hallucinations into the air. Arranged in a triangle with the base in front of her and the tip behind the charging genin, there was no escape. Before sycophant's jutsu went off (whatever it was) he was hitting the ground too gone to know which way was up. The last thought on his mind would be attacking anything and unlike knockout gasses it was unlikely that anyone would have an antidote for this. She'd have liked for the hallucinations to be horrifying or painful but that would risk the affected person attacking anything that moved or stationary targets at random hoping to end the trip.

She smiled brightly at the two other genin as the gas wafted away. Unfortunately it had to be delivered in a very concentrated dosage otherwise she might have gotten the whole team with it given the direction the breeze was blowing.

The two remaining squared their shoulders, looked at each other and nodded. The girl dipped her hands into her pockets and came up with some senbon. She flung them in a spread at Sakura as Quasimodo charged.

When they got to her Sakura quite casually snatched the two nearest to her out of the air. She remembered well how intimidating that had looked when she'd seen Zabuza do it and she hoped that it would be similarly discouraging to the kunoichi who'd thrown them.

Sakura noticed that the long needles all had bells on the ends and she wondered if that was the reason their village was called Sound. Again she felt the leaking chakra from their building techniques. She was glad that these ninja weren't nearly as skilled as the missing-nin Team 7 had faced yesterday. If they had perfected their techniques as much as Orochimaru then she wouldn't have the smallest chance of reading their jutsu use by chakra sensing. Because they leaked so much chakra when they went to perform the technique she could follow that signature and know when their jutsu would happen and some clues about what the jutsu would effect.

The girl was building chakra that felt like a genjutsu technique, strangely the bells on her senbon were also charged with her chakra. She would need to be careful of false auditory along with the more typical visual affecting type.

Quasimodo was putting quite a bit of chakra into his right forearm. Thinking it might be another odd piece of equipment like sycophant was about to use, Sakura moved to disable that arm. No aim, no technique was the principle defense.

Sakura jumped forward tossing one of her captured needles at the hunchback's head. As she hoped he dodged in towards her. She grabbed his left wrist and using her superior strength twisted him around using it. She finished the adroit grappling hold by sinking her remaining purloined senbon deep into a nerve cluster that controlled movement in his right arm. She then tripped him by kicking his feet out from under him and shoved him back towards the girl.

She might have gone too deep when she noticed the tip of the needle sticking through from the other side of his shoulder. From the limp nature of that arm the senbon had still done its job; she'd have to thank Haku for being the inspiration behind that bit of training.

Just the girl left then. There were a couple of trap tags near enough to her that they might work. If they didn't work directly they might be used to encourage her to get closer to a different trap.

-o0o-

The kunoichi (Kin) was getting the impression that this mission would end in total failure. Zaku and Quasimodo (Dosu) had been beaten by a skinny little girl who wasn't even fully paying attention to them.

Zaku had gone down to some sort of poison trap and was currently drooling into the dirt. Now that she looked he actually appeared to be humping the ground. _Ewww._

Dosu wasn't much better off. She didn't know if the pink-haired kunoichi had done it on purpose or if she'd just lucked out but she'd completely disabled Dosu's melody arm which rendered him only as dangerous as any other genin taijutsu user without the use of an arm.

As for herself: she knew that the other kunoichi had noticed the bells (it was pretty hard not to), but she was sure that the pinkette knew that they were the focus for a jutsu. Most of her other tricks were projectile in nature and the casual way that the other girl had plucked her senbon from the air suggested that those type of attacks wouldn't get her very far. She certainly wasn't going to tangle at close range with someone who could toss Dosu around effortlessly. Kin was beginning to really lament the one trick nature of her team's strengths. If they got through this okay she'd have to insist on more varied training.

-o0o-

Sakura was starting to hope that the hesitation in the Oto kunoichi meant that she would take her teammates and leave without further violence. Maybe she'd do the smart thing and leave before she and her teammates got more injured.

These hopes were dashed when she felt a rather vile chakra emanate from behind her. She nearly flashed back to the fight yesterday; it felt just like that missing-nin's chakra. She spun to face the new threat, totally disregarding the Oto genin she turned her back to.

The chakra was coming from an awakened Sasuke. His chakra was showing a sickly purple aura. It felt diseased and horrible. She could tell that Sasuke was furious but there was nothing to be angry at just now.

Then he started laughing.

"Yes, this power, I love it!" he crowed. "I'll be able to kill that man with this power!"

Sasuke dissolved into more hysterical laughter. Sakura noted, with some relief, that Naruto was awake now as well and watching their teammate from the shadows of the tree. Abruptly Sasuke noticed their visitors.

Between blinks he'd moved behind the Oto girl. Sakura didn't like the twisted smile Sasuke was sporting as the kunoichi was looking around frantically for him. He just allowed her to barely notice him before delivering a crushing blow to the small of her back sending her tumbling across the clearing. She came to a rest just to the left of Sakura, whimpering as she lay there.

Sasuke took several steps forward presumably to continue beating on the girl but he stepped on a primed trap. The trap went off releasing a half-dozen sewing needles coated in a powerful mixture of muscle relaxant and sedative. Sakura sighed with relief when Sasuke dropped before he could take another step.

She looked at Naruto, who looked back at her in disbelief, before they both exploded with laughter.

-o0o- break -o0o-

Ino could not believe the totally overblown hype of this test. She, Shikamaru, and Chouji had been in the forest for three days and they had barely even seen signs of the other teams supposedly crawling over every meter of this allegedly deadly training ground. She had been promised danger around every turn and a near constant battle for survival against nature for the entire 120 hours she and her teammates were going to be in the forest. This would, of course, be made much more challenging by the efforts of the other teams competing in the challenge.

She absentmindedly bisected another giant arboreal leech that dropped down on her from above. She dutifully ignored Chouji's shrieks as one landed on his head and attempted to bite his face. She had started the test worried about her teammates ability to deal with the forest's dangers but after several hundred repetitions of the same thing she'd come to the conclusion that her teammates were just squeamish, Chouji unreasonably so where it concerned insects.

She was very much enjoying having a real sword to use. It had only taken dropping the name of the training ground to Iruka-sensei to convince him to hand over her sword. It was as beautiful as the day she'd picked it up from the blacksmith's. Soon after Ino had started training in the discipline of the sword Iruka had recommended commissioning a custom sword to the specifications of the style she was learning from him. It had been done for a while but Iruka had been holding on to it in order to prevent any accidents. Quite naturally he was not going to hand over a live blade to someone, nominally under his responsibility as her sword school's master, when he wasn't sure he could trust her not to cut anyone or anything with it (without a good reason at least).

The sword itself almost exactly matched her practice sword except for a last minute design quirk that she'd thought to add when she'd ordered the sword. It was still a 70 centimeter blade with an additional 15 centimeter handle. The pommel was a wide ring much like a kunai's pommel; it did lack the typical tassel as Iruka believed them to be mostly useless and had never seen them used effectively in combat despite knowing of several techniques and schools that argued for its utility. The blade width had grown from a mere four centimeters to six centimeters. The design quirk she'd envisioned and described to the sword smith was to add a ten centimeter long slot in the spine of the blade about one third the length of the blade from the tip. Ino thought that this gap would be useful in disarming opponents of bladed weapons by capturing her opponent's blade in the slot and twisting her sword sharply to jerk it out of their hand. She hadn't been able to test this with her practice sword due to the slot crossing several indispensable seals used to maintain the wooden replica's integrity.

Truly it was a developing tragedy that she hadn't found any reason (a non-Konoha genin team) to test the sword against. On Shikamaru's suggestion they had avoided both the tower and the river after a very early stop at the river to fill all the containers they had with water. He had explained that as the most frequented places in the training ground it would be a good chance that any contact they made would be promptly intruded upon by the other teams sure to be stalking those areas. As they weren't eager to get into any brawl where they didn't at least equal the number of enemy combatants they decided to avoid the possibility. As it was they'd spent their days trekking through the space between the river and the tower hoping to catch a team coming from the river exhausted from battle but holding both scrolls.

They had heard a great brouhaha yesterday afternoon but she hadn't been able to convince her teammates to check it out with her. Even her very flimsy excuse that they could vulture off the probably very tired winners was summarily rejected.

She was so tired of jumping through the endless empty trees. The slight satisfaction she drew from forcing Chouji and Shikamaru to work out and simultaneously train by refusing to patrol on the ground had totally lost its luster. She was about ready to start popping flares to draw attention damn what her teammates said about it!

-o0o-

Thankfully for Ino's sanity it was around this time that a team from Kiri was traversing the forest floor beneath the trees they were leaping through.

They had just finished stealing a scroll from an unlucky Suna team whose unfamiliarity with plentiful water sources had left them woefully unprepared for combat in the heavy mist of Kirigakure no jutsu. It had been a fairly disappointing battle where their opponents had surrendered as soon as one of their teammates had been unable to entirely avoid a sword swipe. It was actually a little suspicious how easily they surrendered but they'd checked the scroll they received from them and it checked out as far as they could tell without actually opening it.

Ino felt the chakra of the mist team before she saw them but that warning allowed her to call a halt to Team 10's progress in order to find their prey. Seconds after stopping the Konoha genin could see movement in the underbrush and they split up to perform an ambush.

-o0o-

Chouji jumped to a branch projecting out over the path the other genin team was taking to the tower. When Shikamaru gave the word he would use his multi-size jutsu to become the destructive spinning ball and drop on the genin held stationary by Shikamaru's shadow bind.

-o0o-

Shikamaru dropped to the ground and hid himself in a suitably shadowy grotto formed by several bushes and a large tree's roots. He gathered the chakra necessary for his family's signature jutsu. When he heard the other team getting closer to his position he started handseals to activate the jutsu at a moment's notice. Once he'd caught them it would be his job to identify them and give the signal for Chouji to drop them.

-o0o-

Ino melted into the branches and circled around to come up behind the ground-bound team at an angle opposite to Shikamaru's position. It would be her responsibility to pick off anyone who escaped Chouji's initial attack. Leaping over them she positively identified them as being from Kiri and flashed the go-ahead signal to Shikamaru using her hitai-ite as a signal mirror.

She began following them as closely as her stealth training allowed her to and examining them to discern their abilities. The one leading the charge was festooned with water bottles and Ino was positive that he relied almost totally on water jutsu as both offense and defense. A blue-haired kunoichi followed behind him; her kit was much more difficult to determine but the long baggy sleeves hinted a nasty surprise in hand-to-hand combat. If she were to fight that one she would need to disable her arms quickly before the mist-nin could bring out any surprises. The last of the trio was also a kunoichi which was surprising to Ino given the general lack of them in comparison to male shinobi. Her weapon was a comically long nodachi. The blade alone was taller than she was and the tsuka (handle) was as long as Ino's arm.

Ino noticed the shadows along the game trail the Kiri-nin were traveling were beginning to stretch into the path. _Too early Shikamaru, _Ino admonished her teammate in her mind, _they're bound to notice them and evade._

True to her prediction the jutsu-user in front noticed the unnatural shadows and yelled a warning. Too far along the path he was caught when the shadows darted out but his female teammates jumped clear.

The blue-haired kunoichi rebounded off a nearby tree trunk straight at Shikamaru's hiding place.

-o0o-

Shikamaru cursed at himself. In his attempt to capture the entire team quickly he'd stated his jutsu too early and the shadows had tipped the point-man of the team off. Instantly the two kunoichi leapt away. Hopefully that would give them the time to take down the shinobi he'd caught.

He was about to give the signal to Chouji when he saw the middle kunoichi flying at him literal metal claws on her fingers grasping at him.

He panicked. He yelped and dropped his jutsu to dive away.

The blue-haired ninja sunk her bladed gauntlets into the tree directly behind Shikamaru's former position. The pineapple-headed Konoha genin rolled out of his dive and threw several kunai directly back at where he'd been trying to force the agile kunoichi to divert or pause.

-o0o-

Chouji heard Shikamaru yell and, thinking it was the signal, started sealing for his jutsu even as he stepped off the branch he was standing on over the Kiri team.

He was in a giant ball and rolling even as he hit the ground. Newly released from his imprisonment the jutsu-user was only clipped by Chouji's meat tank when he tried to dive to the side. The Kiri-nin cried out as he felt some of his ribs break. The impact, even partially dodged, sent the water-user tumbling and rolling until he fetched up against a tree, knocking out his breath.

The third kunoichi drew her sword and stood her ground against the charging boy. Drawing back her sword she prepared to bisect the rolling boy.

-o0o-

Ino would not have been able to stop laughing if this had happed to someone _else_.

Shikamaru panicking and dropping his jutsu instead of attempting to grab the girl coming at him with his active jutsu; Chouji dropping out of the tree thinking that Shikamaru's yell was the signal; actually being able to hit the no longer bound nin; pinning the kunoichi's overlong sleeves to the tree with kunai thrown blind; this was a comedy of errors.

She saw the kenjutsu kunoichi winding up to cut her teammate in half and Ino decided to join the fray. She stepped up behind the girl totally masked by her camouflage genjutsu and suppressing her chakra. Unnoticed Ino slammed the pommel of her sword into the base of the focused girl's head, dropping her like a puppet with her strings cut.

Chouji tumbled out of his jutsu to land on his feet (_thank goodness,_ thought Ino) and blink in astonishment as the girl appeared to him to just collapse.

Ino jumped towards where the blue-haired kunoichi had just ripped her sleeves free of the knives pinning them to the tree. She pulled up her lunge when the blonde's sword transited the space the other kunoichi was about to move into.

The mist-nin was quick and began a furious chain of taijutsu moves slashing, stabbing, and flailing trying to put blade to the blonde's flesh. Ino was calmly, though quickly, stepping backwards and dodging trying to lead the girl into a place where she would have more room to use her sword.

The fight was over in an instant after Ino was clear of the close trees.

The mist girl lunged at Ino again, fingers spread and hooked like a tiger's claw, aiming for Ino's stomach.

Ino twirled her sword deflecting the metal gauntlet away from her.

Two quick half seals formed with her left hand activated a D-rank lightning jutsu. She touched her left hand to the pommel of her sword.

Her follow through whipped up over the mist-nin's head and slapped the flat of the blade down into the back of the overextended girl.

The lightning jutsu, meant for stunning large animals, discharged through the blade into the kunoichi scrambling her nerves and left her twitching on the forest floor.

-o0o-

The male shinobi of the Kiri team finally gathered his breath and looked up to the sight of a very sharp blade pointed at his throat.

"We would like your Heaven scroll," stated the blonde on the other end of the sword. This sounded like a very reasonable request all of a sudden. It wasn't like they'd worked very hard to get it, right?

"It's in Haimei's equipment pouch!" At her frown he elaborated: "The girl with the blue hair, the one on her left hip."

He heard some rustling around before a boy's voice confirmed that he now had it.

"Thank you for your cooperation," the blonde said pleasantly but not removing the sword. "Good luck with the rest of the exam."

That said she and her team jumped into the trees and continued in roughly the same direction that his own team had been heading in. He cursed once again his spineless responses to girls with bladed weapons, he blamed his water affinity. Not his tightly strung teammates, of course… at least not where they might find out.

-o0o- break -o0o-

It hadn't taken long after Sasuke's "episode" for Naruto to capture Quasimodo in his wires. He'd grimaced a lot about how difficult such a basic task had been. They'd then searched the team, been pleasantly surprised by the Earth scroll they'd found on them, taken it, and left the team at their campsite while Naruto, carrying Sasuke on his back, and Sakura made tracks towards the tower.

They were now standing in front of one of the entrances to the tower. There was a phrase inscribed on the doors that was missing two kanji. Sakura figured that the Earth and Heaven fit into the saying in some way but they were still reluctant to open their scrolls. Naruto didn't know what Anko considered "horribly unspeakable things" but he had no desire to find out and even less desire to have them done to him.

"I don't think we have any other options. We need to do something other than standing out here in the open like giant stationary targets," stated Naruto.

"I know, I'm just leery of the consequences," replied Sakura. They both thought about it some more but no other solutions were coming to them.

Sakura abruptly whirled around and drilled an unfortunate Taki-nin with their spare Heaven scroll. His attempt at sneaking up behind them while they debated wasn't appreciated. Hopefully the bruised rib would remind him to be more considerate in the future.

"Screw it, we can't stand around here anymore. Gimme those scrolls," said Naruto with a shrug. They unrolled them together and saw some sealing script on them, thinking they were explosive or otherwise unpleasant they tossed them at the door and jumped back.

"Congratulations on passing this section of the… why are you standing that far away? And why is Sasuke in a heap behind Naruto?" asked Iruka having just appeared in a cloud of smoke issued from the scrolls.

"Er… we were led to believe by Anko that something unpleasant would happen to us if we opened the scrolls before we'd finished the test." Naruto rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly and blushed at the misunderstanding. "You know what she can be like… we were a little scared of what might happen."

"Ah, yes, that's understandable I guess. Anyway, getting both scrolls and your entire team to the tower means that you passed, even if one of you is unconscious… probably have to revise the rules next time we do this to stop any repeats," muttered Iruka as he trailed off. Naruto and Sakura were a little amused that their former sensei wasn't more concerned with one of his better former students.

A sudden commotion coming from the surrounding forest caught their attention.

Abruptly another genin team burst from the tree line and landed in the clearing. The two boys were supporting a kunoichi between them who was obviously seriously injured. They were wearing leaf hitai-ite on their foreheads and were looking quite ragged.

Sakura, Naruto and Iruka rushed forward to help them. Initially they jerked back expecting an attack but seeing a chunin proctor that they recognized allowed them to relax slightly.

"You have to get help! Tenten has been seriously injured," yelled the boy in the green spandex. The other boy took the girl from his teammate and laid her down on her front revealing a very messy bandage covering the small of her back and her hips that was soaking through with blood. Seeing the medical badge on Sakura's satchel both boys allowed themselves to be pushed aside by the pink-haired kunoichi.

Iruka took in the situation at a glance and Shunshin'ed off to get more help.

Naruto grabbed both boys and moved them out of Sakura's way. He could tell they were panicking and would soon go into shock if they weren't occupied.

Sakura dropped her medical satchel next to the injured girl, Tenten her mind unhelpfully supplied, and began a diagnostic jutsu. The results came up as extensive trauma to the lower back and indications of poison in the wound. She immediately sliced through the bandage ties to expose the wound so she could begin extracting as much of the poison as she could.

As soon as the wound was revealed she sloshed water from her canteen over the wound and her hands before activating a poison extraction jutsu. Using the water as a medium she sought out all the traces of poison in the girl's bloodstream, her first priority was stopping the spread of the damage. She'd go back later and pull it out of the other tissue but first she needed to make sure it didn't kill off anything the girl needed to live while Sakura did that.

It took only moments to gather all the poison in her blood. It was a very viscous example of a chemical and fortunately it hadn't run freely into and through her veins or gone very far. Sakura released the poison and tainted water into the wide-mouthed beaker she'd set beside her when she'd gone for the water. Now it was time to assess the wound.

It looked like she'd been hit by something with a lot of points and then had it dragged out of her sideways to induce as much tearing as possible. Sakura wasn't good enough at using Shosen no Jutsu to direct the induced cellular mitosis that would heal the girl and she didn't trust herself to start practicing on live subjects by attempting to repair the girls back.

Much of the wound crossed over the spinal column so she started there by stabilizing it; using chakra to bind two dull senbon to the vertebrae in order to stop any movement. A more experienced medic would later take them out once they'd healed the rest of the damage and checked for injury to the nerve trunk. Sakura then started closing off the major blood vessels in preparation for healing the punctures in them. The bleeding slowed enough that she could afford to no longer be frantic.

"Somebody force her to take a blood pill!" snarled Sakura at whoever might be listening. She saw Naruto's gloves enter her peripheral vision. "The red pills with the black stripe. Stick it in her mouth and massage her throat, if she doesn't swallow tell me."

The hands grabbed the correct pills and retreated from her sight. She returned her concentration to what little she could do with the mystical palm technique. She was closing up the holes and tears in the veins and arteries before she allowed the blood to flow through them again. Much like a tourniquet she couldn't leave the bigger blood vessels clogged for a long amount of time; that would cause as many problems as it would solve.

Connected as intimately with the other girl's bodily functions as she was, she could feel the exact moment that the blood pill started working. Sakura felt a burst of chakra originating in the girl's esophagus and suddenly her bone marrow went into overtime, pushing ever increasing amounts of new blood into her veins. She knew that this would only continue until the chakra charge in the pill ran out but that should mean enough new blood to make up for the loss of so much of it from her wound. The pills themselves were dangerous if used too many times in a short time period or if the patient was already chakra exhausted but neither of these were true for Tenten.

Sakura paused in her healing of the veins: she'd made it through all the large arteries and major veins and reopened them up to continue pumping blood back and forth from the legs. She used the pause to pin a red and black striped patch of cloth to the girl's shirt. The medics who would handle her after Sakura and eventually the doctor would then know that she'd already had one blood pill.

Tenten moaned, the intense pain of the wound finding voice even as she was unconscious. Sakura dove back into her bag to grab a syringe which she jabbed into the girl's shoulder and depressed the plunger all the way. Immediately, taunt muscles began to relax and the slight trembling ceased. Sakura pinned another color-coded fabric patch to the girl to denote which and how much pain-killer she'd been given.

-o0o-

Naruto had shoved the two teammates of the girl away from the immediate area, Tenten he remembered the one calling her, and tried to keep them from going into shock.

"Hey, HEY, what are your names and team number?" asked Naruto trying to get them engaged.

"I am Rock Lee a Konoha genin of Team 9 under Maito Gai," said the one in green spandex. Now Naruto remembered, he'd been classmates with these two before joining the class he'd graduated in. The other guy was Hyuuga Neji, Hinata's asshole of a cousin.

"I am Hyuuga Neji of the same team and affiliation," said Neji stoically. Naruto thought he was bottling up his emotions a little too tight but at least he wasn't in danger of going catatonic where there were still possible enemies.

"I'm Naruto and that's Sakura behind me and she's going to do everything possible to help your teammate, Tenten. She's been studying as a medic-nin since she left the academy and I'm told she's a prodigy so I'm sure that Tenten will make it through this. Can you tell me how it happened?" asked Naruto careful to look for signs that he was pushing them further into shock. Their faces smoothed over a little however and they took on the cadence of a mission debriefing.

"Somebody force her to take a blood pill!" snarled Sakura at whoever might be listening. Naruto rushed over to his teammate's side. "The red pills with the black stripe. Stick it in her mouth and massage her throat, if she doesn't swallow tell me."

He grabbed the set of pills matching that description and stuck one in her mouth. He rubbed her throat until she swallowed several times and he saw Sakura visibly relax. Then he went back to the rest of Team 9. He reassured them that what just happened was a good thing and encouraged them to continue.

"We decided to split up and look for a scroll to steal. We were to meet back at an agreed upon location every night and we would sleep taking turns with the watch to keep up our strength. Neji managed to get the scroll we needed after both Tenten and I had recovered duplicate scrolls," reported Lee. Neji broke in here to clarify.

"I am very gifted with the Byakugan and was able to identify the scroll the other teams had before engaging. I hadn't managed to find a team with the necessary scroll until yesterday."

"It was decided that we would wait for daybreak before making our way to the tower in hopes that the teams still moving through the forest would be less watchful from being tired," continued Lee. "As we were crossing the river we were set upon by a team from Kiri. They were able to isolate us from one another using ranged water jutsu. Then they would attack us two on one in order to overwhelm us. Neji had just managed to disable their primary jutsu user when we heard Tenten scream."

There was a pause as Lee shuddered and both of them looked haunted.

"She'd been hit by their weapons user. He was wielding a club that was studded all over with senbon. She'd been struck in the back and we were just in time to witness him rip the club sideways and tear her back open." Lee had tears streaming down his cheeks and Neji's knuckles were whiter than his eyes normally were as he picked up the narrative. "He said the needles were poisoned and that if we didn't surrender our scrolls she would die without the antidote. We did as he said and surrendered our scrolls. After he had them in hand he and his teammate laughed and told us that there was no antidote and we were stupid and naive for believing that he would comply even if there was one… we lost ourselves to our grief and killed him and his still conscious teammate."

"You did the right thing," Naruto reassured them. "You didn't know that he would either not have or not give you the counter to the poison so you had to take the chance. By killing him when he expressed his cruelty you prevented him from ever doing that to someone else."

A bare whisper of a sound hailed the arrival of a full ANBU team along with two medic-nins. With quick professionalism the two fresh medics took over from Sakura, a rapid-fire series of questions and answers followed about diagnostic and treatment before the medics unsealed a stretcher, shifted Tenten onto it and had the ANBU carry it into the tower with them. Naruto thought he recognized some terms for various sections of the nervous system and vascular system but they were talking too fast for him to know for sure.

Lee and Neji took off, running alongside the stretcher holding their teammate and medics beside.

Naruto took a deep breath and looked around, trying to center himself after that. It was incredibly jarring to see someone he knew so badly hurt. He remembered those three from the academy. You never expect to have your mortality quite so blatantly pointed out and having someone you knew personally so close to that invisible line brought it home to the blond. He felt like a mere moment wasn't enough and he was ready to take the rest of the week off after this.

He noticed a pair of bloody scrolls on the ground next to where they'd set Tenten down. He picked them up amazed that both an Earth and a Heaven kanji were revealed under the blood splotches. He realized with a start that it must have been Tenten who'd been carrying them. They weren't lying where they could have fallen from either of the guys of Team 9.

He saw Iruka off to the side standing with another medic-nin who was looking over Sasuke's still unconscious form. He wandered slowly over to Iruka, surprised at how exhausted he was. It must have been the adrenaline dump flushing out of his system, so intense for so little physical work. He stopped to allow Sakura to lean on him for support and then they both made their way over to their former academy sensei. She was scrubbing furiously at her still bloody hands with a sanitary wipe.

"I think that these were Team 9's," whispered Naruto as he handed over the bloody scrolls. "Tenten must have grabbed them when the mist-nin dropped them to defend himself. If it's possible they should advance even though one of the members won't be able to compete in the next stage."

"Yes, well, I'm sure that they'll thank you for picking these up for them once they know that Tenten is safe and recovering. Let's get you all a room so you can rest until the second stage ends tomorrow," replied Iruka.

They moved into the tower leaving the additional medic-nin to tote the unconscious Uchiha into the safety of the building. Iruka led them up two floors to where they would spend the rest of this stage of the exam. It was set up much like a dormitory cum barracks being a collection of small rooms with bunk beds in each one; a very small chest of drawers and cabinet for them to store their gear in sat next to the door of the room. About five minutes after Sakura and Naruto had collapsed into the same bunk together, the medic-nin unceremoniously dropped Sasuke on the floor of the room.

"Apparently hero worship is only good for two flights of stairs and a hallway," grinned Naruto as he wrapped his arms around the pink-haired girl. Both of the still cognizant ninja managed a tired giggle. A handful of minutes later only slow breathing could be heard in the room, all its occupants were asleep.

* * *

AN: I'm back. Sorry about the wait on this chapter... nearly 6 months is pretty horrible turnaround I know. I had a major Naruto burnout shortly after getting into the forest of death scenes and I just didn't feel like working on this at all. Anyway, the good news is that the next chapter is already nearly finished. Just a couple more paragraphs to wrap it up and then some editing and I should be posting that as well.

Happy December to everyone, Holiday season has arrived!


	16. Chapter 15

On the morning of the fifth day the second stage of the chunin exam came to an end. Any teams still in the forest without both scrolls and not at the tower were now disqualified. Another gaggle of faceless chunin went into the forest to round up the teams still out in the forest and to get a body count for the casualties.

The genin who made it to the tower with both scrolls had assembled on the ground floor in a large arena tiled with stone blocks and watched over by an enormous bust of a shinobi holding the ram seal and a balcony that ran around the other three walls.

Just in front of the statue on a slightly raised dais between the figure's elbows sat the Hokage flanked by a half-dozen jonin and another dozen chunin proctors. They had been waiting here for several minutes having been told nothing beyond where to meet and that they'd be wise to show up fully equipped. At some unseen or unheard signal the Sandaime began.

"Congratulations to all of you genin who have made it thus far. We have six teams here, totaling 17 able ninja ready to continue which means: we will need to conduct a round of preliminary matches to reduce the numbers. If there is anyone else here who feels they cannot continue and wishes to drop out and await another opportunity you may now do so without disqualifying the other members of your team."

Naruto looked around to count the faces and check who might be his opponent in the next session. He was surprised, though pleasantly so, to see Lee and Neji among the gathered genin. The Hokage continued when it became obvious that no one was going to forfeit.

"Since no one else had withdrawn, we will conduct a single round of eliminations with one shinobi getting a buy into the finals without fighting today. The matches," a cough interrupted the Hokage before he could continue.

"Perhaps I should explain, Hokage-sama, as the referee for the preliminary matches," interjected a sickly-looking jonin. He was pretty tall with brown shaggy hair mostly hidden under a bandana to which his hitai-ite was affixed. He was attired in a fairly standard dark blue jumpsuit with the green flack vest, wrapped ankles, black sandals and a non-standard katana slung on his back.

"My name is Gekko Hayate, Konoha jonin," he introduced himself. "As Hokage-sama was saying, there will only be one round of matches, so those of you who fight will only do so once. One of you will not be fighting; all the fights will be determined by random assignment." There were nods of understanding; some privately hoping to be the lucky shinobi who wouldn't have to showcase their tricks to the others, some eager to fight and disappointed that there would only be one such opportunity. Other, more intelligent, ninja were cursing the necessity of revealing some of their tricks to a watching audience. Sakura couldn't help but be curious however and raised her hand to catch the proctor's attention.

"You sound like you expected more of us to fail to make it through the forest. Why is it necessary to pare us down further for the next stage?" she asked. She didn't want to exhaust herself fighting and then go immediately to another combat test tired and with everyone knowing some more of her tricks.

"The next stage of the exam, for those of you who pass this next round of matches, will be the final stage of our chunin exams. Those will take place in a month. They will resemble these matches: one-on-one, without any team component, but the entire tournament must conclude within a single day. The point of these final matches will be to show off for potential clients and you will represent your village to them, gaining or preventing future business based on how well you perform. Due to the clients' importance it behooves us to not delay them from other appointments and business," explained Hayate briefly. He saw there would be no more questions so he started the board cycling names.

"Would Nara Shikamaru and Abumi Zaku stay, everyone else please move to the balcony and clear the floor for their match." The two genin stepped to the center of the arena while everyone else climbed the stairs to the second floor balcony. They gradually congregated around their jonin-senseis, sticking in their teams.

Naruto and Sakura drifted past Lee and Neji who were already standing with an older looking clone of Lee. They wanted to hear how Tenten was fairing.

"How is your third teammate if you don't mind us asking?" started Sakura. "We haven't heard anything though we did think that you both being here was a good sign."

"She is stable now and the medic-nin are cautiously optimistic about her recovery. They do think that her career as a kunoichi is over but it may be possible that she will walk again," their sensei answered her. "My students tell me that you are the one that kept Tenten alive until the medic-nin arrived. The medics think that she would have died before they could have done anything had it not been for your help. Thank you very much for saving the life of my precious student. I owe you a very great debt for this."

Sakura was incredibly relieved when she heard that Tenten would live. She blushed a little at what she thought was an exaggeration of the importance of her intervention. She didn't believe that she'd been able to do enough. She was shocked speechless when the jonin got down on his knees and bowed until his head touched the floor in respect. The other genin murmured a little when they saw the students follow their teacher's example and bow as well. Even Kakashi was astounded by the seriousness of his rival, he hadn't heard what his student had done for Maito Gai but it must have been serious in the extreme for the green beast of Konoha to act so solemn.

"I'm grateful I was able to help," responded a shaken Sakura. "I'm only sorry that I couldn't do more for her. I'm just starting out as a medic-nin. Had I known more I might have been able to fix some of the damage to her back instead of just slowing the bleeding and removing some of the poison."

"You did enough to save her life which is all we could ask of you and more than she could have expected otherwise," said Neji. He seemed to still be struggling with what had happened. Naruto could see the turmoil in his pale, pupil-less eyes even if his face looked like it might be carved from marble.

"You and Tenten have our sincere hopes and wishes for her complete recovery," assured Naruto. "If there is any way we might be of further help please don't hesitate to ask for it."

The two ninja from Team 7 bowed to Team Gai and moved to join their sensei and third member.

-o0o-

The match had started while Naruto and Sakura were still speaking to Gai and the remnants of his team. So far it had been just the two competitors sizing each other up, trying to determine how the match might be won.

Shikamaru observed the clenching and unclenching of the Oto-nins hands and determined that whatever Zaku was going to come at him with would be coming from his hands. Thus it became important to disable or redirect those hands. He saw that the boy didn't have much in the way of weapons, projectile or otherwise and he guessed a hand-associated jutsu of some kind. Either the jutsu would come from the hands or a great deal of handseals figured into it. He knew that his first move would incite the other shinobi and he'd learned his lesson in the forest well about the first strike requiring both speed and precision. Thankfully this fight wouldn't feature any reinforcements and the Konoha genius could focus completely on the spiky-haired sound-nin.

-o0o-

Zaku was keeping his distance. He knew there could be no traps placed in the floor yet but he recognized the cool intellect in his opponent's eyes as the same type the pink-haired kunoichi had sported when she'd thrashed his entire team. He didn't want to make the same mistake of rushing right into another trap and embarrassing himself.

The pineapple-headed boy didn't seem to be overly muscled nor gifted with an overabundance of grace so Zaku ruled out the boy being a taijutsu specialist. The lack of conditioning and the distance which he'd started at when the match began suggested a long-range jutsu of some type but Zaku didn't know if it would be ninjutsu or genjutsu and they required different approaches.

He waited for the Konoha-nin to make the first move, whether it was ninjutsu or genjutsu would determine his next actions.

-o0o-

Shikamaru recognized Zaku's tactics. He was giving up the initiative in exchange for information he would use to beat Shikamaru. He growled a little to himself, he hated to make the first move; one could not tailor a strategy to their opponent's actions if the opponent would not make them and were an unknown factor themselves.

He needed a moment to work the handseals for his jutsu but he got the feeling that this sound-nin would work to break the sequence and retake the initiative with Shikamaru fighting on the defensive until he made a mistake and was finished off.

He just needed a moment.

That was it! He formed several handseals without molding chakra just for show and then performed a kawarimi to get behind Zaku.

Instantly the log was blasted across the arena by a pressure wave of wind formed from the palms of his opponent's hands. Shikamaru was right about the hands being the instrument of Zaku's fighting style.

Shikamaru flung some kunai at Zaku's back and immediately starting handseals, this time a legitimate sequence.

-o0o-

Zaku saw the shattered log that his Zankuuha had blasted across the room and then heard the hissing of air caused by thrown weapons coming from behind him. He spun and unleashed another blast at the knives and they scattered.

He smirked arrogantly when he saw that his opponent had his hands still outstretched from his throw.

He'd end this in only one more move.

-o0o-

Shikamaru waited until the last second before covering his face with his hands.

Zaku, caught in the Nara's signature jutsu, mimicked the move perfectly and caught his own jutsu with his face. The black-haired sound-nin was blasted backwards, arcing a good ten meters back before hitting the ground once more.

Hayate checked the downed shinobi to make sure he was both alive and not able to continue before he announced: "Winner, Nara Shikamaru!"

Shikamaru grinned briefly in victory before he returned his hands to his pockets. He'd caught Zaku in his Kagemane no jutsu just as the boy had knocked his thrown kunai from the air. Shikamaru had needed to mimic Zaku's position so he wouldn't give away that he'd already trapped Zaku. Once he'd been sure Zaku was going to use his jutsu, he redirected the blast to a more suitable target.

At a nod from the proctor he moved up to the balcony as the board began flashing through names again.

-o0o- break -o0o-

In the Torture and Interrogation division of ANBU headquarters, Morino Ibiki was returning to his favorite guest. He had a thick file under his arm filled with raw data that Yamanaka Inoichi had provided when he'd taken a trip through Kabuto's mind. Now the goal was to take the data that wasn't self-explanatory and get some context for it.

The white-haired teen had tarred the reputations a lot of people that Ibiki had been itching to get his hands on, both within Konoha and without. He was hopeful that the information that the traitor contained would lead the way to some hard proof of wrongdoing and he could finally be justified in killing that asshole Danzo and some others on the civilian council. They had been playing around with Konoha like it was their own personal sandbox and the ninja inside it simply sand to be tossed around as they pleased.

Ibiki was the most dangerous kind of patriot, one that believed in a benevolent leader whom he would spare the unpleasant necessity of dealing with these scum. He wasn't seeking revenge, he was seeking justice - but that didn't mean he wouldn't enjoy exacting the punishment.

"Good morning Kabuto-kun, we had a long talk about Orochimaru yesterday evening and exactly what his plans are for the Uchiha boy but today I'd like to learn a little more about this invasion and what Danzo's Ne forces have to do with it."

-o0o- break -o0o-

"Would Akimichi Chouji and Aburame Shino come down to the arena."

Shino and Chouji were not of a type to rush into a fight and their relaxed walk to the arena might have been mistaken for an unwillingness to fight by many who didn't know them. Understandably they were reluctant to fight someone they knew and generally liked but they had no particular conflict with what they saw as a no-holds-barred spar.

Naruto was curious as this match could go either way. Shino was totally reliant on his bugs to attack and defend as far as the blond knew and they would struggle to find purchase on many of Chouji's methods of attack. So it all came down to who could get the first solid attack to stick. If Chouji got into his meat tank technique quickly enough the kikai bugs Shino used to fight would be useless; but if Shino managed to evade long enough he could reliably count on letting Chouji hit a wall and use the pause to drain him of chakra.

When he saw that they were finally in place Hayate started the match with a chop of his hand and a shout.

Showing influence from Shikamaru, Chouji did the intelligent move by immediately using his Baika no jutsu to turn himself into a human ball. He tucked his arms, legs and head in and started rolling into his Nikudan Sensha trying to hit Shino before the bug-nin could deploy his allies.

Shino narrowly dodged the first charge, leaving behind a small stream of kikai insects in Chouji's path. As Naruto expected they weren't able to gain a hold and the ones that managed to land were shortly thrown off or crushed under the large genin.

Showing control that Shino apparently did not expect Chouji turned a respectably tight radius and came flying back at his fellow Konoha genin.

Shino froze for a fraction of a second. It was enough for Chouji to run him over crushing him to the floor.

Chouji dropped his jutsu and turned to see Shino. Just in time to see Shino's body burst into a cloud of insects. He was too close and the kikai descended on the rotund boy before he could reapply his jutsu. It only took seconds for the swarm of specially bred beetles to pull enough chakra from the Akimichi to end the fight.

"Winner: Aburame Shino!" announced Hayate.

-o0o- break -o0o-

"Sabaku no Gaara and Kinuta Dosu report to the ring."

Sakura noticed Quasimodo's look to his sensei. Apparently the boy was less than eager to fight the psychotic sand-nin. Whatever the look the sensei had given the boy it had meant that he would be fighting anyway.

Meanwhile, the red-headed boy had already appeared on the arena floor amidst a swirl of sand. There was no mistaking the look on the boy's face, he wanted to kill someone and it didn't much matter who. Sakura might have felt sorry for the genin but he was entirely capable of conceding defeat and if not he'd come upon her team fully intending to kill them; that he'd been unable to was a fault of skill not resolve.

Once the reluctant Oto-nin had made it to the floor the jonin proctor started the match immediately.

Reluctant to fight or not Dosu took the initiative. He slammed his right arm into the floor causing a ringing noise rather than the slap most expected.

-o0o-

Sakura turned to Naruto in concern when he visibly flinched and grimaced.

"It's some form of chakra augmented sound. At higher levels or if we were closer it would probably cause major damage to the ears… it's rather painful to my hearing cause I have sharper hearing than you do and can hear a broader range as well," the blond whispered to his pink-haired teammate. Sakura nodded and looked to see the reaction from Gaara.

-o0o-

Contrary to whatever Dosu was hoping for Gaara didn't appear to be effected by the attack. The red-head stood rock still exactly where he'd been when the match started. Unsure of his ability to use his special jutsu to harm the Suna-nin, Dosu dashed forward to engage in hand-to-hand combat where his superior height and build would show an advantage.

-o0o-

Seeing the charge Gaara didn't even bother uncrossing his arms.

-o0o-

Dosu found his first punch stopped cold by a wall of sand that had formed in a blink about an arm's length from the murderous genin. The sound genin barely recovered from his shock in time to notice the sand flowing around his fist. Thankfully his fist came free with a frantic yank and Dosu jumped back to rework his strategy.

-o0o-

Seeing his prey keeping his distance motivated Gaara to act. He uncrossed his arms and sent a wave of sand barreling at the fur-clad genin. Seeing the bandaged boy roll left away from it, another gesture turned the wave of sand and sent it chasing the frantically dodging Oto-nin.

With his prey distracted dodging the first wave, Gaara manipulated a smaller surge of sand away from himself. He began using the large wave to chase the other genin into the trap of the other docile sand.

When Dosu jumped over the hidden sand in his desperate bid to put more distance between himself and the deadly rush of sand chasing him, Gaara acted.

The sand jumped off the floor and captured his ankles tripping him.

The pause was all that was necessary for the rest of the sand to catch up to him.

-o0o-

Dosu frantically flared his chakra blowing the sand from his ankles. He tried to roll left away from the avalanche of sand after him.

He was partially successful.

He was jerked in a tumbling spin as it clipped his right side and engulfed his right arm. Another application of chakra and he was once more free for the moment.

-o0o-

Gaara frowned. This prey was proving more elusive than typical. His mother was screaming for blood!

He managed to feel that there was still some sand stuck to Dosu's arm. Gritting his teeth in preparation for the difficult manipulation he was attempting, Gaara sought out all the sand still remaining on the sound-nin. With a vicious swipe of his hands Dosu's melody arm assembly seemed to explode as the sand which had entered if through the holes was violently ripped away.

-o0o-

Dosu screamed in pain.

His melody arm was a metal gauntlet that totally covered his right forearm. It was mostly hollow with chakra channels and what amounted to tuning forks inside it that could be manipulated by his chakra to produce the destructive harmonic tone that would shatter crystals or tear and break solids. It had been surgically grafted to his flesh shortly after he'd entered the service of Orochimaru, an experiment that had shown promise as a weapon that would be quickly mastered to a level that was very dangerous.

When Gaara's sand had entered through the holes and then been pulled apart it had taken the metal assembly with it. This essentially took all the skin and the top layer of muscle and tore it away from his right arm.

He dropped to the ground clutching his destroyed arm to his chest. This pause was fatal.

-o0o-

Gaara directed his sand to surround the screaming sound genin. Before the proctor could call the match he clenched his hand.

Dosu's screaming cut off abruptly as his blood sprayed across the arena. Gaara's sand soaked it up, even scouring the floor where it had sprayed.

Finally mother was silent.

-o0o-

Naruto and Sakura watched Gaara's expression, their own like granite. They would need to get together with Ino and spend any amount of time necessary to make sure they could shut this one down. He was a loose cannon and there was no guarantee that he would stop when the proctor said so should they find themselves across from him in the finals. He was obviously looking for blood and the two genin were rather inclined to leave theirs where it was.

Naruto was already contemplating how he would pierce that sand armor. He thought his modified great breakthrough that he'd used against Orochimaru in the forest would do the trick. Still he needed a backup and possibly a backup to his backup.

Sakura was wondering if the sand shield would stop her punches and if so would it stop a kunai thrown with all her strength. She wondered if some seals like Ino had used on her practice sword would be applicable to kunai that might give them some extra penetrating power. She'd need some earth jutsu just to be safe. She'd need to test her theory but it seemed logical that the right earth jutsu could manipulate sand and hopefully really spoke that little homicidal psychopath's wheels.

-o0o- break -o0o-

A short break had been called after the violent death of a competitor. While the arena didn't strictly need cleaning, it did give the genin a chance to pull themselves together when some earth jutsu specialists repaired the floor and walls where they'd been damaged by the previous bouts.

"Haruno Sakura and Tsuchi Kin, report to the arena floor." Hayate almost looked like he was going to say more before the fight started but held himself back. He wanted to remind them that this was just a rank advancement test but he didn't want to imply that Konoha was squeamish. The other villages were always probing for a weakness and there were still several foreign jonin around.

Sakura eagerly walked down to the arena, she was very interested in seeing if a second encounter with the sound kunoichi would prove more challenging. Their last spat had been interrupted and Sakura had been eager to see what the Oto-girl would come up with.

-o0o-

Kin was less eager for a rematch. She'd already decided that Team 7 was full of monster people. Sasuke had survived the application of the cursed seal and even now didn't appear to be experiencing any problems, something she'd previously understood to happen to less than once among a hundred test subjects. Unconfirmed rumors that the larger numbers were, it was easy to confirm that the seal did end up being fatal to a majority of its recipients.

Orochimaru himself had come back very interested in the pink-haired kunoichi that she was expected to face. This didn't bode well at all: all of the people that interested Orochimaru were either monsters or soon ended up dead, that she was still alive was a very telling fact to Kin.

She didn't know much about the blond but the subtle deference of the other two monster genin told her that it would be wise to fear him above even the other two. After all, anyone strong enough to cow teammates like those would have to be incredibly strong, incredibly smart, or incredibly vicious.

Maybe her team's defeat was a fluke or indicative of very good preparation on the part of the kunoichi but Kin doubted it. They'd laughed off the possibility of their teammate going on a cursed seal fueled rampage (sure it had been cut short but it really could have been bad).

-o0o-

Sakura noticed the body-language of her opponent. She was terrified. Both of her pink eyebrows arched delicately in surprise. She'd have to give these sound genin a little more credit. One of her teammates had gone to certain death unflinchingly, her other teammate was defeated by the least threatening appearing boy here, she was clearly scared of the upcoming fight but she still stood across from Sakura, back straight and ready to fight.

If she started off aggressive she thought there was a good chance that she could end the fight quickly. Still, it wouldn't be fair that her teammate wouldn't have any visitors; she'd have to remedy that.

"Haruno Sakura vs. Tsuchi Kin: Hajime!" shouted Hayate.

Sakura rushed through several handseals to activate her chakra scalpels.

-o0o-

Kin, already worried, nearly screamed when she saw the other girl's hands glow blue. She grabbed for her senbon and flung them in a spread between herself and the other kunoichi.

The bells jingled and Kin wove her chakra into the sound as quickly as she could. The genjutsu wouldn't be as solid as if she'd taken her time but the priority was disorienting her enemy in order to set up something better.

As she felt her genjutsu seat itself she sidestepped to avoid a straight charge should the pinkette ignore the changing image and mark the position she'd held before the genjutsu.

-o0o-

Sakura prepared to push off in an almighty lunge at the girl when suddenly the ringing of the bells on the ends of the senbon intensified and the Oto kunoichi appeared to split into dozens of copies.

Sakura checked her lunge but continued pushing chakra to her legs and feet in preparation for pushing off as fast as possible. She closed her eyes to better concentrate on her chakra sense.

_There!_

The tile underneath her feet cracked as she kicked off, hands up to catch the elusive illusion-user.

-o0o-

Kin felt hope bloom in her when the Konoha-nin stayed stock still under the illusion. If the other girl was weak against genjutsu she might just have a chance at winning this. She nearly laughed in relief when the girl actually closed her eyes. If she was that badly affected by such a simple illusion just what would she be like in response to some of Kin's more devious and complete genjutsu.

All that relief drained in an instant when the girl unerringly oriented on her and exploded towards her.

-o0o-

One swipe with the ethereal blades coating her palms was all that was needed to drop the confusing illusion.

Eyes once more opened Sakura began taking the sound kunoichi apart like a butcher carving meat from an animal. Totally calm, cool, collected, dispassionate: she severed tendons, lanced nerve clusters, and tore muscles. To the spectators she appeared to be gently frisking her long-haired opponent when in reality she was causing damage the Hyuuga could only enviously aspire to causing.

Kin dropped like a marionette with the strings cut.

Sakura activated a general diagnostic jutsu just to check her work. It wouldn't do to have cut something she hadn't intended to. She nodded to herself in satisfaction that she'd only touched the targets she'd meant to, her control was improving.

"Winner: Haruno Sakura!" announced a very nonplussed Hayate.

-o0o- break -o0o-

Sarutobi's Kage Bunshin made a discrete hand signal to one of the ANBU lurking in the shadows behind his chair. He waited until they leaned down in front of his face to block any possible lip reading before he spoke.

"I want you to accompany the injured Oto-nin to the hospital. Once you get there I want you to have the medics declare the girl dead and the boy brain damaged. Have them moved to a secure interrogation facility."

The ANBU didn't even pause to nod before vanishing in a flicker of pure speed. With their foreknowledge from Kabuto they knew that the sound village would be the primary invasion force. It was just good sense to avail themselves of every resource they could about the possible plans. The silver-haired genin had also revealed that Orochimaru, his wayward student, was the leader of said village and as soon as Sarutobi was assured that the traitor wasn't posing as the Oto-genin's sensei he would be ordering the quiet detainment of the jonin too. The higher ranked ninja would know much more but there was no sense in alerting the snake they were on to him by attacking the traitor and not one of his puppets nor did the expected losses of his own shinobi in an attempt make him any more eager to try.

-o0o-

The real Sarutobi wiped sweat from his brow as he stood amongst the wreckage of a very remote training ground. One of his ANBU had signaled a stop to report the latest results of the preliminaries and relay his shadow clone's orders to be confirmed. He would get all those memories back when the clone dispelled but it could hardly dispel after every match and expect to be replaced without anyone noticing.

Sarutobi was every bit as out of shape as he had suspected. With imminent doom staring down his precious village he was working as hard as he possibly could to get back into shape. He'd been spending most of every day, since Kabuto had spilled his weasel-y black guts about the upcoming invasion, training and reconditioning himself. His village would fall only after his own life had been torn, kicking and screaming, from his body.

He suffered the short jutsu examination by the medic-nin his ANBU guard had talked him into bringing to all of his workout sessions. He would admit to himself that it was rather interesting to know exactly how far he could push himself in his training even being such an old man. He would even admit aloud to liking how healing jutsu applied after physical exertion sped up the time required to get back into shape and how it reduced the amount of pain suffered getting there. However, being ANBU… having the best intentions… all that aside, as soon as he brought out his bo-staff for practice those brats were going to get a thrashing they'd remember for the rest of their lives.

_Call me old will they? I'll show them geriatric, they'll have so many aches they'll think __**they**__ have arthritis! Young people, no respect for their elders._

-o0o- break -o0o-

"Rock Lee and Hyuuga Hinata are the next contestants."

An uncharacteristically solemn genin from team Gai jumped over the balcony to meet his opponent. Hinata was poised and somehow elegant as she descended the stairs. Her bearing had changed drastically for the better since meeting Haku and her mother, Rikka. Instead of hesitant and shy she now appeared demure, the picture of the restrained, graceful young lady.

Both genin bowed to one another, a first among the matches. Before they turned to face the proctor Hinata spoke: "I thank you, Lee-san, for taking care of my cousin while he is on your team. It is good to know that he has such a good comrade."

Lee looked startled at the address and Neji was dumbfounded. Lee had been expecting the worst of this Hyuuga main-house member just from what he'd heard and assumed after hearing Neji's descriptions of their actions against the branch-house members. Obviously there was a second faction within the main house or another side to those stories.

-o0o-

Neji wasn't sure if he should be furious or something else. He told himself that the main-house heiress was being condescending and had backhandedly insulted his prowess as a ninja, presuming that he needed his teammates to make up for his lack of skill, but he just couldn't think that of the transformed woman he saw now. He didn't believe her capable of giving honest insult, and certainly never giving an insult to someone's face. Hinata's body language currently said that if she were going to give insult she would do it facing down the recipient and would rip them to shreds with an eloquent and ruthlessly cultured tongue. This was not the impression anyone would have gotten even a few short weeks ago but apparently: much had changed.

Visually not much had changed. She was still fairly short, kept her dark hair in a bob with two longer locks on the sides that framed her face. She still wore the navy blue pants that stopped just short of her ankles and the standard ninja sandals. Her coat however, she had gotten rid of, instead she now wore a thick kimono top like Haku wore but with full sleeves instead of the ice-nin's three-quarter sleeves. Underneath the pale blue kimono, a black shirt of some kind could be barely seen through the V where the kimono closed. Her hitai-ite was still around her neck, but her head was held upright rather than scrunching her chin down like the metal plate would protect it.

No, it wasn't what she wore but how she carried herself, Neji decided.

The weak and cowed heiress he remembered no longer existed. Here was a confident, if somewhat guarded, woman who was every bit the stereotype of regal clan matriarch. She seemed to Neji's eyes to be more regal and deserving of respect than even her father, the actual clan head.

It had just become apparent that he had some rethinking to do about the way he was living his life. First his teammate defied fate and survived in the face of near certain death, thanks almost entirely to the efforts of a rookie genin. Then the person he'd hated since losing his father had genuinely thanked his teammate for the spandex-clad boy's part in Neji's continued well-being.

This test was certainly a breeding ground for surprises and challenges to the status quo.

-o0o-

Lee gathered his wits and bowed again to Hinata.

"I did no less than my duty, though it gladdens my heart that the Fires of Youth burn so brightly in one of Neji's family!" shouted Lee overcome with emotion. "Yosh, I am refreshed! Your kindness Hyuuga-san had reignited my own blazing powers of Youth. Together we will show the Power of being in the Springtime of our Youths!"

That certainly shut everyone up. If not the nonsensical rant then the visible fires within the spandex-clad genin's eyes and the start of a very disturbing background genjutsu. For Naruto it was the shiny smile that did it. There was something wrong with teeth bright enough to function as a signal mirror. The wide stance and overblown pose were just icing on the cake after all that.

"Right… Hyuuga Hinata vs. Rock Lee: Hajime!" shouted Hayate, disturbed enough to hope this was over quick so he wouldn't need to be around the clearly disturbed boy any longer than necessary.

Lee exploded out of the gate like a cannonball. If Hinata was surprised at his speed it didn't show as she calmly spun away following Lee's momentum to cause a total miss.

Lee turned on a dime and came right back at the diminutive Hyuuga. Fists flashing, the exchange was nothing but a blur to all but those gifted with the fastest eyes.

They jumped apart after only seconds. Lee was grimacing at the feeling of several accurate chakra-charged taps. Only Hinata's eyes showed her discomfort from the punches she hadn't been able to fully deflect.

-o0o-

Neji was shocked again. Hinata wasn't using the traditional Jyuuken. Whatever style she was using incorporated similar chakra spikes used to directly damage internal organs, muscles and seal her opponent's tenketsu, but it was not the hard precision of the traditional forms.

This new style was fluid, deflecting your opponents strikes was standard practice for every Jyuuken user but Hinata's were subtly different. She seemed to flow around the incoming strike, altering the position of her body rather than use her arms to redirect the punch away from her, only forcing Lee's punches away when dodging wasn't an option.

As a strength of the style, Neji noticed that this lack of deflection freed up her arms to better take advantages of holes in Lee's guard and had allowed Hinata to liberally close tenketsu all along Lee's forearms. Were Lee a jutsu user the battle would be over, he would be unable to use chakra in his arms and it would only be a matter of time before a more critical strike could not be blocked.

But Lee couldn't use jutsu, and was, by consequence, a taijutsu specialist.

-o0o-

Hinata noticed that her opponent wasn't unduly worried about not being able to call chakra to his hands. He merely flexed them several times to work out the minute twinges that typically accompanied the splash-over into the actual muscle. That probably meant he didn't rely on jutsu, something she had guessed with such a taijutsu obsessed teacher, as she frequently overheard from her cousin.

This was a problem.

Hinata knew that her forming taijutsu style was far from complete and was by-and-large still untested. A taijutsu expert practicing an established, battle-tested style would soon be able to pick out the holes that occurred when initially modifying several dissimilar styles into a cohesive new whole.

Any prolonged taijutsu engagement in any of the styles she was learning would eventually lead to her defeat. The style she knew the best was the Hyuuga style but Neji was much more a master of it than her and Lee had been sparring against him for over a year at this point. The style she was learning from Haku, which was the basis for her new style, she hadn't mastered enough to fight someone of Lee's competence. She would need a different strategy and primary weapon.

Thankfully Haku had been tutoring her in water jutsu as well.

-o0o-

Lee could not remember ever having such a good spar against a fellow genin. Neji's cousin was very skilled in a style he'd never seen before. It was clear to him that she hadn't mastered it yet and could almost be considered a novice actually, but every move he'd seen so far had been brand new. The only familiarity was that each tap and contact had felt like Neji's family's style, which made sense considering who his opponent was.

When they were finished he would need to see about arranging further spars with her, maybe ask if Gai-sensei could aid in her continued development to keep it challenging.

He continued to study her stance as he waited for her to make the first move this time. It was obvious that she practiced a reactionary style, one that worked best when redirecting an enemy's attacks against them. He would have to be very careful about overreaching and making sure that his follow-through would not take him closer into danger.

He saw her dip into an equipment pouch and he prepared to dodge, while Neji didn't like thrown weapons he was very accurate when he did use them and he could likely expect the same from his family members.

-o0o-

Hinata found what she was searching for and lobbed it at the green genin with one hand while striking it sharply with the other.

Water sprayed outward as the water bottle exploded against the force of the strike.

Hinata was forming handseals in an instant. The droplets and spray quickly morphed into dozens of spheres and accelerated to a dangerous speed right at Lee.

-o0o-

Neji was scandalized. A non-Hyuuga jutsu came from the clan heiress? It was totally unthinkable.

It was completely… disregarding… …tradition.

Neji allowed a smile to cross his face. _Maybe having Hinata-sama as the next clan head is something to be looking forward to instead of bemoaning. Perhaps a more supportive role would end the practice of the caged-bird seal faster?_

-o0o-

Lee dodged on instinct alone …which was good for him because Hinata had just sunk every assumption he'd thought had been safe to make about the Hyuuga clan.

Apparently the way Neji fought was not shared by all the Hyuuga despite whatever the dour boy said to the effect of preserving traditions and all the other twaddle he was constantly ranting about.

Here was a Hyuuga using an elemental jutsu. He was so shocked by this that he even glanced at Gai-sensei and saw that his beloved teacher was as astonished as he was with this new development. That made him feel better, if Gai-sensei hadn't known to expect that then how could Lee have possibly guessed. But now he knew to expect jutsu from this short blue-haired girl and that meant he would need to attack her. He could no longer expect her to engage in hand-to-hand with him, she'd recognized that he was better at it than her and she was exploring other options.

It was clear to Lee that he needed to as well.

-o0o-

Hinata swore in her head as she saw Lee effortlessly dodge all the parts of her jutsu. She didn't have many more water bottles and she wasn't yet proficient enough to pull the water out of the air or reuse the water spilled on the ground.

She saw that as soon as Lee had avoided the last of the water he was coming right at her again. She read his movements and as soon she he struck out at her she moved.

Grab the wrist, twist it to the outside.

Turn with the momentum.

Jerk wrist down, at the same time shift hips into his side.

-o0o-

Lee went from leading with his left arm to looking at the ceiling trying to catch his breath almost before he knew what was happening. He barely managed to move his head out of the way of a follow-up stomp.

Rolling he managed to break the wrist lock and disengage. He came to his feet facing Hinata. The throw was unexpected and illustrated how adept she was at turning his momentum against him. Combinations would need to strike the first time or they would probably not strike at all. Once he got a hit he would need to keep the pressure on lest she turn the tables on him with another throw or counter.

Lee moved in closer. He would need to stay close enough to be a threat to her ability to complete a jutsu but far enough to pick up some speed. Hinata's reflexes were too fast to deal with unless he had enough speed to overwhelm her.

-o0o-

Hinata gave a "come here" gesture. He was too close to start handseals, they would be interrupted before she finished. She would need to counter him and then immediately start her jutsu; preferably she would throw him away from her and hit him while he was still not fully in control.

He rushed again. A kick this time.

She ducked the kick and moved in. Striking out with her foot she aimed for his standing ankle.

She connected taking his feet out from under him. His foot didn't go as far as she expected.

Grab his still outstretched leg, throw it up.

Sidestep the responding kick from his other leg. Deliver double palm strike to the back while he's back-flipping out. Now form seals.

-o0o-

Lee tumbled away from the strike to his back. He hadn't thought her fast enough to both avoid the walkover kick when she'd used his first kick to throw him _and_ to strike his exposed back. He was just thankful that there wasn't another chakra spike from that hit.

He tucked his legs and completed the flip to land on his feet, stabilizing himself on his fingertips.

A quick glance to check his opponent showed her forming seals. He lunged forward trying to break the sequence and catch her off guard.

A thick tendril of water shot from her equipment pouch and slammed into his midsection.

Lee doubled over, allowing the hit to take him away from the kunoichi.

-o0o-

Naruto was grinning broadly, watching Hinata hold her own against a much more experienced genin. He was glad that Haku was such a powerful influence on his friend. Before knowing the false mist-nin, Hinata would not have been able to stand toe-to-toe with Lee.

The fight could still go either way but already Hinata had proven that she was far from weak. If Neji's expression was anything to judge by she'd also earned a new ally within her house.

-o0o-

Lee was smiling brightly. He loved nothing better than a challenge. Every challenge overcome was one step closer to being a fantastic ninja without the use of ninjutsu or genjutsu. Already he'd learned things about facing Suiton users and facing taijutsu styles he'd never seen before. All he had to do was overcome this challenge and he would prove the power of his Flames of Youth.

"Yosh! You are truly a spectacular opponent Hinata-san!" he yelled. "I must work my hardest to overcome these new tricks but my fires of youth will see me through!"

"Lee, Hinata is a worthy challenger! Show her the meaning of speed!" yelled out Gai from his place on the balcony. Lee looked to him to make sure. "Take them off, I give you my permission!"

"YOSH!" yelled Lee as he reached for his leg warmers (to the not so slight relief of those who didn't know to what Gai was referring). Yanking up the bottom of the orange knit things, revealed that underneath them hid some rather impressive ankle weights. Inscribed with the kanji for guts, they seemed an appropriate accessory for a green spandex-clad taijutsu aficionado.

Lee stood up and held them out at arm's length before dropping them.

They cratered the floor.

The majority of the ninja there were wondering how the boy moved at all with those weighing him down. Naruto wondered how he walked without similarly damaging the floor with his steps.

-o0o-

Hinata knew she was in trouble now.

If Lee was that fast with the weights on, he would be impossible for her to keep up with when the weights came off. It was probable that she wouldn't even be able to see the boy move clearly and her counters depended a lot on being able to read her adversary's move before they made it. A difficult chore at the best of times: she believed that it would be all but impossible now.

Still, like every good ninja, she had an endgame and a backup plan.

She had a single water bottle left which was enough for a single jutsu. Timed correctly she could use Suiton: Suijinheki to ricochet the oncoming genin off her spinning water shield and into a nearby wall. Ideally this would stun him long enough for her to use a Jyuuken strike to a pressure point to knock him out. It was a risky plan not in the least because she would only get one chance to pull it off. It required the artful juggling of multiple conditions: she needed to lead Lee close to a wall, she needed him to charge her in such a way that she saw it coming; she needed to time the activation of the jutsu to when he couldn't stop; _and_ she needed to do all this without getting so injured that she could no longer pull it off.

Her backup plan was to grab onto whichever limb that she could and repeatedly Jyuuken the crap out of whatever she could reach. It wasn't a very good backup plan as plans went but you played the cards you had.

-o0o-

Naruto was eager to see what his friend had in store for Lee. It had been awhile since Hinata and he had trained together but he was reasonably sure that she couldn't handle the increase in speed those losing those weights would surely give Lee. Hinata was a planner though and he didn't doubt that she'd discovered some options. He wasn't sure he believed that she had too many _good_ options but he knew she would play ball rather than concede defeat so easily.

Their past association had gone a long way towards making her as stubborn as Naruto was in the face of defeat.

Sakura could see the eager look in Naruto's eyes and she couldn't help but feel some anticipation over what Hinata might pull out next. If Naruto looked excited she was reasonably sure that it would be something worth seeing, and possibly imitating. Sakura knew she couldn't deal with that kind of speed either and was now eager to see a possible work around until she got that fast herself.

-o0o-

Lee burst forward in the blink of an eye. So fast he'd left an afterimage in most genin's vision. Some of the jonin even had trouble keeping up, especially so as they weren't ready for that kind of quick from a genin.

Hinata felt like she'd been hit by a charging elephant and she tumbled out of control until she fetched up against the wall of the arena. She saw stars and knew that another one of those hits would finish this bout for her. Still she was now near a wall and capable of performing the jutsu she needed. She hauled herself to her feet. This would be the last move one way or another.

Again Lee charged her.

She readied herself.

Hands held out front like the initial stance of a throw.

He picked up his speed, she lost track of him.

She started her handseals, the fastest she'd ever done them.

The water responded, a tidal wave from a bottle, it swirled around her.

She saw a leg burst through the wall, her eyes didn't even have time to widen in surprise when it connected with her side.

She felt one of her ribs break. Her jutsu fell apart; though not before forcing the intruding body part back out. Hinata went airborne again. This time she landed back in the center of the arena.

-o0o-

Lee saw the handseals for another jutsu but he was too committed to this attack. She'd timed it well. It was now a pure race to the finish. Whoever managed to land their attack in full first would invariably be the winner.

He saw the water form up from her waist yet again. He recognized a similar jutsu that the mist team he'd fought in the forest had used. It was a shield, not offensive. He put more power behind his kick to make it through the defense.

His foot penetrated the shell of swirling water. He felt it connect solidly with something behind it, shrouded now behind a veil of water.

Then the extent of her plan became clear when he felt himself ripped off his feet, the force of the water dragging his other leg off the floor and him into the air. The water slowed only a fraction and just for the split second before he was flung hard into the arena wall.

Concrete cracked and splintered, the combatants were hidden by rock dust.

When the dust cleared Lee walked out, bruised but ready to continue.

-o0o-

Hinata struggled to her feet. Her side was on fire. It hurt to move, it hurt to stand, it hurt to _breathe_. She forced herself to stand up anyway. The dust would not settle to show her prone.

She was unable to continue but she would end the match on her feet.

When the dust had cleared both genin faced each other. Hinata, cradling her side, bowed slightly to Lee.

"Proctor-san, I am unable to continue. Lee-san's last attack broke several ribs and the last jutsu exhausted my chakra," said Hinata, firmly but quietly. Hayate nodded to her.

"Winner: Rock Lee!"

-o0o- break -o0o-

Once the medic-nin had checked Lee and taken Hinata back to the infirmary to have her ribs set, it was time for the next match.

"Sabaku no Temari and Uzumaki Naruto, report to the arena floor."

Naruto was reassured rather than intimidated when his likewise blonde opponent unfolded a war-fan and used it to glide down to the arena instead of jumping the railing or taking the stairs. She would be employing a lot of wind jutsu he figured and that was very much to his advantage.

Even as he descended the stairs, Naruto was formulating strategies he could use to neutralize incoming wind jutsu. With a fan that large he imagined that she wasn't accustomed to close combat and would be easier to defeat if he deprived her of range and time to use her more powerful jutsu. Since he'd come up with a preliminary strategy and had garnered and used the information available just from a glace, he figured he could stop stalling and actually get to it, he was _so_ ready for another fight.

He jumped the latter half of the steps and bounded forward in a cacophony of wooden clacking and brass jingling. He earned a scornful look and a raised eyebrow for his trouble. Naruto smirked to the proctor; apparently the sickly man had guessed the noise was a distraction technique. As quick as he'd caught on the blond wondered if the cough might be something similar.

With a slight cough and a barked command the match started.

Both blondes exploded into action immediately and in the same direction. Temari leapt backwards even as she pulled her fan back in preparation for a jutsu. Naruto jumped at her hoping to close the distance before she could get a jutsu off and end the match quickly.

The only think this accomplished was that Naruto caught a necessarily shortened jutsu at point blank range. The reduced blast of unshaped wind sent the Konoha genin tumbling.

Temari landed on her feet skidding backwards. Her jutsu had greatly accelerated her progress across the arena. She was startled by the aggressiveness of Naruto with her understanding that Konoha was such a passive ninja village. It didn't occur to her that there was a reason the leaf village could operate the way they did and still be considered _the_ preeminent great ninja village.

She'd been forced to switch jutsu in midair and then actually use the jutsu before she landed and was able to brace herself against it. She saw that her opponent had arrested his momentum and they now surveyed each other across the entire breadth of the arena.

Temari was quickly recalculating her assumptions and reworking how she was going to beat this Konoha brat. He'd looked perfectly ridiculous waltzing up to the proctor wearing bells of all things. How was she supposed to take a low-ranked ninja that did things like that seriously? Sure it would have been a different kettle of fish if he'd been older or if they'd met on opposite sides of a mission, the better ninja were notorious for their rather insane foibles but on a no-account genin it screamed 'kill me' to her senses.

She was going to have to take this seriously now though.

She opened her fan to all three moons and swept it forward.

-o0o-

Naruto was tumbling.

He was reflecting that charging a kunoichi holding a weapon ready for attack wasn't his most brilliant idea.

He'd been gambling that she would wait till she landed and had solid footing to unleash windy hell. He'd lost that bet. Still it was a surprisingly weak jutsu from what he would have guessed based on how highly skilled he'd classified her as.

He popped up to his feet with no problems.

He surveyed the distance between them and had to suppress a groan. This was going to take ages and a goodly amount of chakra to traverse and there was no way she was just going to stand there as he kept getting closer. He toyed with the idea of taking a page out of Hinata's playbook and let her knock him into a better position but he discarded that option as it would be exceedingly unlikely that she would take any chances allowing him to get closer even in exchange for an opening for a more powerful jutsu.

He'd have to be smart about this and maneuver her into a spot she couldn't get out of or into a position he could reach her in.

…or maybe he'd just make all her options bad.

A smirk crossed his face as his hands came together.

"Kage Bunshin no Jutsu"

-o0o-

Temari growled as four shapes burst from the smoke that consumed the leaf shinobi. She swung her fan and channeled her chakra through it.

"Kamaitachi no Jutsu" she screamed. The wind from her fan picked up and screamed across the arena. The wild gale obscured her vision momentarily as it struck her target.

-o0o-

Naruto grunted as he used chakra coated hands to tear his way through Temari's jutsu with no harm. It was more difficult than he'd anticipated and he'd lost two clones to the scything blades of condensed wind riding within the gust.

Not wasting any time he rushed forward in the opening he and his clones had bought. Naruto counted off the distance left to himself.

20 meters…

15 meters…

13 meters…

"Ngh, son-of-a… RAgh!" grunted Naruto as he wrapped his fists in wind-natured chakra to rip through another blast of wind. 10 meters…

-o0o-

Temari was cursing in her head. The brat was a juggernaut! He kept coming no matter what she threw at him. He repeatedly punched his way through her wind jutsu. He walked through them like they were cardboard, only his bells' furious cacophony of sound gave evidence to the jutsu's violence.

She couldn't risk using her weasel summon to cut him to bits either. She needed to save that technique as a trump card in the likely case that she needed one during the invasion.

She launched two bladed blasts of wind right after each other and rushed along the wall trying to open up the distance between them once more. She was a mid to long-range specialist; she needed space to combat enemies, especially ones that looked like they wouldn't be put down by a simple clubbing with her fan. She was beginning to doubt that there was anything she could hit him with that would drop him for any significant amount of time.

-o0o-

Naruto rocked back on his heels and he skidded back a half step despite anchoring his feet to the floor with chakra. The second jutsu right after the first was a clever move; he'd allowed the chakra in his hands to dissipate and had so felt the full initial brunt of the second jutsu before he could break that one.

He saw the Suna kunoichi move along the wall. Ten meters was too close for her comfort apparently. She was being cautious which would make getting within reach harder but it was still doable. He was getting the hang of canceling out her jutsu and he was sure it would only get easier and cleaner the more he was forced to do it. If no sooner solution presented itself he was pretty sure he could win by attrition.

He directed his clone to close off her retreat a little. If he could force her away from the walls he might be able to get either a clone or himself behind her. She probably couldn't swing that giant tessen in a complete circle before he was close enough to stop the swing from hitting him.

It was time to pull out some jutsu of his own.

His hands flashed through seals as he gathered air in his lungs, saturating it with chakra.

"Kaze: Daitoppa," whispered Naruto. The blast of chakra dense air shot towards the retreating kunoichi.

15 meters…

-o0o-

Temari cursed again when she saw the clone of the boy cut her off early. She could tell it was a solid clone technique and with how tough the original was proving to be she had no desire to test the mettle of a replica, theoretically weaker or no.

She felt a spike of chakra behind her and she spun bring her fan up to deflect a fire jutsu back at the ignorant leaf-nin. Her wind chakra would feed the blaze and torch the little bastard when it backfired.

Her eyes nearly bugged out of her head seeing the overcharged wind jutsu crashing towards her.

She desperately dove away, barely escaping the edge by a succession of tumbling somersaults. Mission-honed instincts were the only things that allowed her to duck the clone's sweeping roundhouse. The jingling of the bells in the clone's hair followed her and she began desperately blocking and dodging away from it.

0 meters… contact.

-o0o-

Naruto watched his clone dominate the close-combat. Since the Suna-nin had first ducked the roundhouse she'd been on the defensive, constantly attempting to disengage and retreat.

He watched a wind imbued punch clip the blonde's side and sent her tumbling. She just managed to keep rolling enough to avoid the stomp to her midsection. She bounced to her feet and swung the now-closed fan at the clone's head. It was a slow and unwieldy strike… the clone dodged easily and darted back in. His kick rose up at her just in time to receive a hidden kunai to the thigh for his efforts.

Naruto's eyebrow twitched just slightly in sympathetic pain from the feedback of information from the clone dispelling.

7 meters…

He rushed forward, cautious of more hidden weaponry.

-o0o-

Temari was getting exhausted. The pressure hadn't let up since the start of the match. Her opponent didn't seem to ever need a break and never paused to think. And those damn bells, ringing just before an attack but never enough time to avoid it or counter it! She was on the ropes. She needed time to plan but she could barely keep up with the boy's simple taijutsu.

Her instincts screamed at her before she consciously heard the bells, just a split second after she'd finally managed to knife the clone.

_*ring*_

One of her hair bunches was blasted into disarray when she didn't turn her head fast enough for the tie to avoid the wind chakra the boy wrapped his feet and hands with. She spun away pulling her fan into her chest. She needed to get distance to bring her fan back into effectual use.

_*tinkle*_

He threw a jumping snap kick at her head. She rolled underneath it, just catching a flash of light… were his geta metal? She spun and slashed with her kunai. A metal-shod geta slammed into the back of her wrist. The kunai went spinning away.

She spun with the momentum of the kick. Random direction, it didn't matter, sprint! Just get away from hand-to-hand.

_*jingle*_

He was back right in front of her. She ducked left.

She avoided the punch that sailed over her right shoulder. She ran right into the knee that had been rising into her stomach.

She grunted and just managed to keep her breath as the chakra spiked from his thigh and the resultant blast of wind knocked her off her feet for what felt like the thousandth time.

She rolled backwards trying to get to her feet once more.

_*clack*_

Temari saw him lash out with another kick and tried to scoot further back but she felt her back hit a wall. He'd maneuvered her into a place where she couldn't move!

The kick caught her fan and ripped it from her hands, sending it tumbling across the arena. The blond finished the spin. As he came around he leaned in and drove his right elbow into her temple and blackness consumed the Suna kunoichi.

_*thump*_

-o0o-

"Winner: Uzumaki Naruto!" announced Gekko Hayate. The medics hurried forward to take the unconscious sand-nin to the infirmary. Naruto was hamming it up blowing kisses to the remaining genin and jonin-instructors.

He jumped straight up back onto the balcony next to Sakura.

"Well that was a good warm-up," he scoffed. Sakura giggled.

"Didn't look that way the first time she caught you with that wind jutsu," smirked Sakura. Naruto chuckled a little in agreement. "and I don't believe I've ever seen you weather wind jutsu like you just did. Did you just decide to unveil this little trick now or did you just make it up as you went like usual?"

"Guilty as charged. You have to admit: you thought about it too or would when you recall that fight in the forest. That walking through the fire jutsu was badass! I don't care who did it first, I wanted to do that and I thought I'd figured it out. If it hadn't worked it probably would have been more than a warm-up. Happy now?" he asked.

"As long as you aren't going to be arrogant about it, I don't want you getting a big head," the pinkette responded. Naruto just looked at her and raised an eyebrow at that. He chuckled a lot more when she finally blushed and hit him in the arm.

-o0o- break -o0o-

Hayate called down Inuzuka Kiba and Sabaku no Kankuro down to the arena and they were just preparing to begin their fight. With all the high-level fights that had been going on there was very little trash talking. Something about the seriousness of the last several matches made levity seem wrong.

In the spirit of teenagers with an overinflated sense of their own importance, Kiba and Kankuro were nonverbally posturing with puffed out chests and rather amusing glares at each other. It was like a couple of low-level yakuza flunkies meeting on the street: lots of drama for little action.

Kiba made the first move, charging in faster than many of the eliminated genin would have even been able to see.

Kankuro slammed into the wall of the arena and slumped down. It had happened so fast that the bandage-wrapped package was still sitting unharmed in the same place the cat-suited Suna-nin had put it down at the beginning of the match.

Suddenly Kiba took a breath and his eyes widened just before he tried to kick the bundle sitting next to him.

The bandages exploded away from a shadow that burst away from Kiba's attack.

"You can't hide from my nose for long dumbass," taunted Kiba, decided to forgo this serious mood bullshit.

"You sure thought you'd won just by clobbering my puppet like a retard, dog-breath," countered Kankuro.

Kiba was reduced to growling unable to think of a comeback. In lieu of a better comment he charged the Suna boy again, winding up for what was sure to be a one-hit K.O. Even the other villages' jonin were impressed by the raw speed displayed by the Konoha genin.

Kankuro set his chakra strings into his puppet during the short pause while they insulted each other and pulled the mode of entertainment cum weapon into the path of Kiba's charge. Sharp blades glistening with a suspicious wetness sprung from a dozen places on the twisted doll. Kiba pulled to a quick stop several meters short of the unorthodox weapon.

"Two on one huh?" sneered Kiba. "Well I think I can even the odds a little. Akamaru, let's teach this Suna-nin how to eat dirt!"

Akamaru rushed from his position in the corner of the arena where he'd been sitting unobtrusively, waiting for Kiba's call to get involved the type of incredibly obvious trump card usually played by someone who had no idea how the concept was supposed to work. Something that Naruto believed Kankuro and Kiba had proven to have in common. Really, revealing the puppet and the dog so early in the match was just pathetic. Still the blond suspected that the puppeteer had at least one more trick up his sleeve. Spending all his time around a genuine homicidal psychopath would no doubt turn the puppeteer into one of the slipperiest people alive. He would have to be to remain that way.

During Naruto's thoughts Kiba had given his dog a specialized soldier pill. With the accompanying burst of chakra the duo had transformed into the Inuzuka's renowned human-beast clone jutsu. Two bestial Kibas stood opposite the black jumpsuit-clad Suna genin and his six-armed wooden contraption. With the odds evened to the dog-nin's satisfaction Kiba resumed the attack.

The human beast clone jutsu increased Kiba's speed even further and with the addition of Akamaru to exploit any openings the match was shaping up to be an easy victory for Kiba.

Kankuro was cleverly using his positioning and the much more highly mobile puppet to cover all his openings while keeping Kiba from inflicting any damage on him. Something would need to give soon and with Kankuro only playing the defensive it would probably be him.

Shortly one of the Kibas managed to capitalize on an opening on the opposite side of Kankuro's puppet.

An open-handed clawing strike sent Kankuro bouncing and skidding across the arena floor once more. Kiba immediately stopped trying to get around the puppet which, perhaps strangely, remained standing despite its operator being out of commission.

The Kiba-clone that hit Kankuro suddenly howled in pain clutching at a bleeding hand before it was consumed in a pall of smoke revealing it to be Akamaru in disguise.

With the small nature of the wound but the great deal of pain Akamaru was in it became apparent that the blade Kankuro had stuck the dog with was poisoned.

"What did you do to Akamaru?" screamed Kiba.

"Just a little poison, leaf-brat. What are you gonna do about it?" sneered Kankuro.

"Give me the antidote or I'll beat it out of you!"

"Now what would be stopping me from telling you the wrong antidote to get back at you for kicking my ass?"

This line of thought had not occurred to Kiba and he took a moment to digest the idea that he couldn't get whatever he wanted by beating it out of people. This would eventually spark a personal revolution in how the dog-nin acted leading, in a few years, to actually thinking about the consequences of his actions. He would always remain brash but at least he now understood that there would be consequences that he would have to face up to at some point.

In this time and place however, Kiba took the only partially sure way to get what he wanted: which was Akamaru in good health.

"Proctor I give up. Now give Akamaru the antidote."

Kankuro sneered again as if Kiba had confirmed how weak leaf ninja were to care about their companions so much that they would forfeit a fight to help them instead of using the distraction to win. He dug around in his pockets for a moment before tossing a vial to the medic-nin that had come out to collect the dog.

"Winner by forfeit: Sabaku no Kankuro."

-o0o- break -o0o-

Now it was time for the match between the last pairing. With only three ninja left this would determine who got a buy into the finals without fighting.

"The last matchup will be between Hyuuga Neji and Yamanaka Ino," announced Hayate.

The coldly arrogant Hyuuga was missing his signatory smirk as he descended the stairs to the arena. Tenten's wounds still weighed heavily on his mood. His self-assured sense of superiority was shattered by the incapacitation of his teammate. He wasn't sure of his invulnerability due to his superior skill anymore. If he couldn't protect his teammate by defeating his own opponent fast enough he wasn't sure that his strength would be enough to accomplish his goal: dominating the best fighters of the main house and proving the superiority of the main house was seal-enforced lie to keep the branch house in line.

His opponent was by all accounts a weak kunoichi who spent all her time chasing boys and neglecting her training in the ninja arts. He wasn't worried at all about this match but he was wondering what he might be able to do before the final round of fights to make himself stronger.

-o0o-

Ino was thinking about how she would beat Neji as she descended the stairs following her opponent. She knew that Neji was regarded as a genius. Lauded by teachers and peers as unbeatable in his chosen arts, he would be a tough nut to crack. If she could get him to lose his composure he would probably make more mistakes but he was one of the Konoha shinobi that she didn't trust to not go for the kill in the heat of the moment. She'd seen that his team had been upset by something and noticed that one of their teammates was missing altogether. That would be a button she would not be touching. If something had happened to the third member of their team it would surely get Neji to be reckless but he would be much more dangerous and Ino wasn't ready to roll the dice against a lucky hit in a taijutsu style that one hit could kill or cripple.

Ino reached up to touch the sword hilt that stuck out over her right shoulder. She imagined that the extra reach afforded by the steel blade would be crucial to this fight. She would have to see if all the hype about the Hyuuga clan taijutsu style had substance. As revered as the clan was, she suspected that (even if the style wasn't as good as they claimed it was) it would still be darn good.

-o0o-

The match started with Neji winding up for a big speech, probably meant to destroy his opponent's confidence, but he ended up leaving off in favor of dodging the sword strike that transited the space his neck occupied. This was unprecedented for the Hyuuga prodigy. No one who'd heard of his ability with the gentle fist ever attacked first and that was doubly true for close combat.

Ino kept the pressure on, striking hard, often, and never allowing Neji any possible counter techniques. Any hand-to-hand style that had been around as long as the Jyuuken would have developed ways to win against combatants using weapons or it would have failed as a style and no longer be practiced by so many ninja. Ino was very much looking to avoid that so she kept her guard tight and her strikes quick. Still, she knew it would only be a matter of time before the Hyuuga genius would see something in her attack that he thought he could capitalize on.

It came as no surprise then when Neji, using incredible speed, palmed the flat of Ino's blade and turned it aside enough for it to miss him. Even taking precautions it was inevitable that Neji would manage a counter but at least this one didn't immediately turn into an attack and totally reverse the momentum of the fight. It was only a transition move.

He followed his block with a sharp palm thrust towards Ino's chest. He expected the abrupt reversal to give the budding swordswoman pause enough for the strike to connect but Ino danced away, wind milling her sword in a tight circle that would have taken a slower ninja's hand at the wrist and the average genin's hand at the elbow.

Neji paused and reassessed his opponent. She carried herself well, seemed competent, used a weapon he'd not heard of her using, and was breathing easily after their engagement. Obviously his information on her was out of date and wrong. He would need to treat this rookie kunoichi as a ninja of unknown skill like he might meet on a mission outside of the village.

-o0o-

Ino could see the moment that Neji began to take her seriously. It was a slight change in the way his eyes moved around her and the way he held himself. He would need to work on that before he became jonin, such obvious tells about the way a ninja was thinking were undesirable in the upper echelons of rank.

Still she thought that she'd learned enough about Neji to be able to defeat him. He probably had a way of dealing with elemental jutsu and her small repertoire of them was sure to fail against such a successful genin. His taijutsu was superb and she doubted that just her sword skills would be enough to bring him down. His tendency to pause after every exchange could be useful but she imagined that he was ready to dodge almost the instant he saw her start something.

She decided that she ought to use her family's signature jutsu. Those had the best chance of success and it would please her parents when they heard the summary of the match. If she used the shortened handseal sequence, the Shintenshin no jutsu should be quick enough.

Plan made, Ino jumped back into action.

-o0o-

Neji was astonished that the blonde genin opposite him was giving away so little of her mental processes with her expression and body language. A skill he thought almost exclusive to the highest ranked shinobi and the members of his family was being displayed with remarkable mastery in a green kunoichi from a rather unremarkable clan.

Other than general confidence and the observation that her style would be a flowing one rather than a sharply abrupt one, he couldn't get a read on her. It wasn't that her face was blank either. She was just showing a single basic emotion unchangingly to the exclusion of all others.

With no more warning than the slight increase in the speed of her chakra circulation and the tensing of her muscles that the Byakugan caught, she leapt forward.

Leading with a thrust to Neji's torso, Ino flew towards him. He sidestepped the lunge and struck at her open side.

She swung her sword back along her side and he had to pull his hands back before contact or risk not getting them back at all. He reflected rather abstractly that she had some strange obsession with removing his hands.

He stepped in close hoping to cut out her ability to swing the sword. From a closer range he could disable her without worrying about retaliation.

She must have seen his intention because she dropped into a backwards roll to get away from his advance.

-o0o-

Ino popped to her feet out of her roll. This was her chance. She knew without seeing that Neji would be coming after her at full speed to keep her from using her sword. She needed him to think he had the chance which was why she rolled out instead of using a chakra assisted leap.

Instead of sweeping in front of herself to discourage pursuit, Ino let go of her sword and began forming handseals.

The weapon hadn't even dropped halfway to the ground when she completed the string.

She lifted the final seal to aim the jutsu at Neji.

She saw his eyes widen at the obvious threat.

Her perspective dissolved.

She was now looking at herself following her sword to the floor. She grinned using Neji's face; it didn't feel right to these muscles, they didn't do this very often she guessed.

"Proctor I would like to concede this match," said Ino using Neji's monotone. The proctor raised an eyebrow at this declaration but then his eyes darted to the collapsed blonde and a small smile appeared on his face.

"If that's what you wish, match goes to Yamanaka Ino," shouted Hayate.

Ino immediately released the jutsu and returned to her own body quickly. She jumped to her feet while simultaneously grabbing her sword incase of angered retaliation on Neji's part but the disorientation of returning to control stopped the dour genin long enough for Ino to be ready.

The readiness of his opponent or the new paradigm shift that the formerly fate-obsessed boy had undergone recently was enough of a discouragement to further attacks and he simply turned towards the stairs.

-o0o- break -o0o-

All the winners of the matches plus Sasuke (as the last ninja left there was no one for him to fight and he got a buy into the next stage) were now gathered on the floor of the arena, facing the Hokage and his entourage, while listening once again to the proctor explain how the final matches were going to work. They had all drawn lots to see who would face whom in the finals and they were now getting the final rundown about who they would be putting on a show for and why they should bother.

The matchups had been determined as follows:

1. Aburame Shino vs. Rock Lee

2. Uzumaki Naruto vs. Yamanaka Ino

3. Uchiha Sasuke vs. Sabaku no Kankuro

4. Haruno Sakura vs. Sabaku no Gaara

5. Nara Shikamaru vs. the winner of match 1

Hayate and the Sandaime had explained to the genin that many influential members of the Daimyos' entourages would be sent from nearly every country both major and minor in the elemental nations. Word of the skills the genin of each represented village would make its way back to the ears of the leaders of every country which would heavily influence the Daimyos' choice of where to hire ninja from. This was mostly a rehash of what had already been mentioned when they had explained the need for preliminaries, so many of the contestants and most of those genin who would not be competing were starting to tune both men out.

Noticing this, the Sandaime decided to wrap things up.

"I'm sure that you all understand the gravity of the upcoming final matches and so I expect you all are eager to start training or make arrangements for additional training during the month we have given you to prepare yourselves." Sarutobi said just before he dismissed them. A couple whispered instructions to some of the jonin with him sent people scurrying about on some important secret business. The Hokage himself started walking towards the exit in order to return to Konoha.

The genin immediately began heading towards the exits, either for rest, to visit injured teammates, or to get a jumpstart on training for the next round of combat. A tunnel was revealed to run underneath the training ground from the tower in the middle to the small shed/guardhouse that Anko had introduced the test standing in front of. The junior ninja and those who had trouble getting through the forest the first time were incredibly relieved that they wouldn't need to hike through that again.

* * *

AN: Alright - the next chapter is up! Yay!

So, the reason that this is being posted in mid-january rather than as the christmas gift I had planned it to be (aren't I such a generous guy) is that my laptop went blue-screen-of-death in mid-december shortly after I uploaded the previous chapter. I'm rather stoked that I managed to recover this chapter at all never mind getting it out in a timely fashion. There were some good reviews last chapter that asked some good questions and I hope to see some more reviews like that. Whenever y'all ask me questions about where I'm going with this it always makes me think deeper and harder about where I'm taking this story and it makes me write faster in order to explore those thoughts... so kudos to you reviewers.

As always the next chapter is on the drawing board but is only about a page and a half into conception so it'll probably be another month before you see any more of this, maybe longer since I'm going back to school full time. Sorry in advance for the wait but as cute as you all are my degree is more important to me.


	17. Chapter 16

Naruto, Sakura and Ino all met up with each other soon after ditching their respective team members to have a short strategy discussion. With a known opponent and a way to narrow down the possible opponents they would be meeting along their tournament path they could emphasize aspects of their training that would allow them to exploit weaknesses in their probable opponents fighting styles.

It had been a fairly short meeting as they all had things to set up either for their training or to see to after spending a week away from home. They decided foremost that they wouldn't let the fights where they matched up against each other to affect their collaboration in preparing for the others. This was a simple rank advancement, not a fight to the death, there was no reason for them to get bent out of shape with each other over what appeared to be a friendly, no-holds-barred sparring tournament. After working out the best preparations for each of them they exchanged goodbyes and promised to meet up again for training soon.

-o0o-

Ino would be spying actively on all the contestants in between the times where she would be working with Iruka on her sword form and whichever jutsu he thought to teach her; possibly influenced by what she could find out about her fellow contestants. With enough information on who she would be fighting she could tailor her abilities to shut down or exploit the weaknesses of her opponents best skills. Unfortunately she would be facing Naruto right away which, beyond being distasteful just as fighting the guy she was having semi-regular sex with, meant that she was unlikely to win her first round. Still even if she did lose, and she wasn't going to go into the fight with that defeatist attitude, she could still make the information she'd gathered over the coming month available to Sakura and Naruto.

-o0o-

Sakura had finally lined up a taijutsu instructor in one of the combat qualified medic-nins who worked with her as an EMN. Although his style was mostly about avoidance (it being necessary to be mostly undamaged in order to put those who weren't back together) his primary mode of meting out damage to the enemy was to use chakra scalpels to target muscles, tendons, nerves, and organs. She thought that this type of targeting the myriad vital weaknesses of the body coupled with not getting hit would translate well as a style using a super-strength hit instead of a chakra scalpel to do the damage. She knew she would need to pick up some extra training somewhere else because there would be many more uses for her strength that wouldn't show to advantage in a style not designed for it; but at this point anything was better that the academy taught style. A couple scrolls describing some physical training exercises (and their practical applications) with some Goken power strikes also would be the stopgap measure she would use in order to deliver a truly colossal strike.

She would of course continue with her medical studies, but with so much of the exam focused on pure combat, the skills she was truly advanced in would not be showcased. She especially doubted that she would be able to fix the kind of damage her first opponent had shown himself capable of and if the killing intent she'd felt when he was fighting Quasimodo was any indication: he would not stop once he'd merely injured her. She needed to acquire enough skill in the coming month to reliably avoid the sand while getting close enough to put the hurt on the little psychotic redhead.

-o0o-

Naruto was nearly finished learning his last style from his ape-sensei and he was determined to have it finished by the time the finals rolled around. He wasn't a master and combat would only improve his grasp on the style but he had learned nearly all the base forms and it was time to summon his partner/weapon and learn to use Tokushu in battle. He was pretty sure that only Sarutobi and the ANBU who had investigated his summoning of Enma knew about his summoning contract. It would be entertaining to see Ino's reaction to him using a spear/scythe/staff/chain weapon.

He also felt that his jutsu needed some work. He had several now but except for the wind shield none of them were defensive. He didn't think that anything the other genin threw at him would be able to penetrate his iron skin technique but whatever Orochimaru had done to him had managed to mess with it so he wasn't counting out another fluke or lucky shot. Naruto had noticed that the hit had left five symbols around the Kyuubi's seal but they were smeared and fractured in form so he couldn't even copy them well enough to identify them later. It had only taken a couple hours before they had broken entirely, they were completely gone before they'd even made it into the tower, but while they'd been there they had wrecked his chakra control. He didn't know how he was going to get some new jutsu nor did he know who was going to teach him but that had never stopped him before.

-o0o- break -o0o-

Naruto's first stop was back to his apartment for a shower and a change of uniform. With that done he wandered over to the apartment next door to see what progress, if any, the medic ANBU had made with the female Sasuke clone.

It turned out that there had been a great deal of progress on that front. She had determined beyond her own doubt that the body was real and permanent. The circumstances of what had happened to the real Sasuke (Naruto didn't know much about that) had convinced her and the Hokage that Sasuke's current body disappearing was unlikely in the extreme.

It seemed to the experts that they now had two last loyal Uchihas. This would no doubt be of great interest to the council if they ever figured it out but soon after asking about the status of the new body Naruto had been told in no uncertain terms to keep his mouth shut about it.

Most of the medical terminology and the new theories that the ANBU had come up with to explain how this had happened went right over the blonde's head. After several minutes of staring at her blankly while she waxed on about chakra-based DNA mutations and energy to protein conversion, Naruto eventually asked her to save the explanations for when Sakura was around. The pinkette would know what the ANBU was attempting to say and Naruto was sure that she could then translate whatever that was to him.

As he was leaving that apartment to visit Tenten he ran into Sakura on her way to do the same. They both felt that they should show their support for her as a fellow Konoha ninja. They had both been scared by the brutality of her injury and seeing her recovering would do as much to help them as it would to show their support for her.

-o0o-

Lee and Neji were waiting outside of the room Tenten was occupying. They both looked pretty worse for wear and Naruto and Sakura imagined that they hadn't stopped for anything before coming straight here from the tower. It wasn't hard to see that any news they'd heard of Tenten's condition hadn't been promising.

"Yo, how are you guys holding up?" asked Naruto into the tense silence. Neji finally made eye contact with the other genin having not looked up when they'd down the hall. Lee did the opposite and broke eye contact to look intently at the tile floor between his feet.

"Not good Naruto-san," answered Lee when Neji didn't seem to be answering. "They have told us that Tenten will never be a ninja again! She will live, they say, and thanks to Sakura-san's help she will probably walk again but the blow has damaged her spine and pelvis. With such a dreadful wound even just the effort of getting back into shape as a ninja could aggravate the wound and make it worse." Lee seemed to take the news of his teammate never being a ninja again especially hard.

The oppressive silence descended on the hallway once more. It seemed that the genin had already run out of things to say. Sakura took the silence as permission to slip into the room that held Tenten. Her EMN qualifications would at least allow her to observe if not help in any way. Lee and Neji started up out of their seats when they saw Sakura open the door and slide in.

"Woah guys, we can't go in there. Sakura is a medic-nin in training with the qualifications to be there we'd just be in the way." Naruto said.

It took half an hour before Sakura came back out the door. Neji and Lee surged to their feet and moved to surround the pink haired girl.

"Calm down, they just finished surgery. She's stable and unconscious. They think she can heal up well enough to return to a civilian life without any problems. Unfortunately several of the lumbar vertebras were cracked all the way to the spinal cord. Any hard blow to her back or a high enough fall would be enough to re-break that and damage the end of her spinal cord, possibly losing the use of her legs. They won't let her be a ninja again. Even if she were to make a full recovery with physical therapy they wouldn't clear her for missions." Sakura lowered her head at this news. Less than two years into her career and it was over for Tenten. She couldn't bear to look at the poor girl's teammates, it was too close to what could have happened to any of them and it was only luck that saved them.

Lee and Neji looked like they had just taken the same hit as Tenten to their guts. Neji's hands clenched until his knuckles popped and turned pale white. Lee couldn't stay standing and collapsed into the chair he'd so recently vacated. Their team lived to be ninja; not the other way around. Not being able to be a ninja was something that they believed to be worse than death or torture if they contemplated it at all.

"I'm so sorry," Sakura said. It felt so inadequate to say so like it wasn't enough.

Depressed now Naruto and Sakura bid Team Gai farewell and repeated their offers of any help they could possibly provide to the elder genin. They couldn't speak until they were out of view of the hospital, quite a distance given the white building's size and position.

"We need to figure something out," offered Naruto. He continued when Sakura didn't respond. "I know it's not our fault or even our responsibility but imagine if that were one of us. We would want someone to figure something out for us."

"I agree in principle. I would love to help Tenten but I just don't see how." Sakura responded.

"What about healing her vertebras like you strengthened your bones?"

"It's not that simple. With my bones I was reconstructing healthy bones, just making them more of what they already were. With Tenten's bones I would need to rebuild broken parts which is an incredibly delicate process especially when a fragment might dig into the nerve trunk. Even with my bones I've had to do more work on them since: reinforcing parts that had already begun to wear and adjusting the thickness and strength in places. I wouldn't be able to constantly monitor Tenten to make sure that nothing was going wrong with the fixed parts, nor could I guarantee that the repaired bits would hold up to the punishment ninja put them through. The body automatically filters out foreign chakra over time and any repairs that I make would be saturated in chakra that her body would be trying to oust out of her. That's leaving aside the issue of not being able to override the decisions of the more senior medical corps." Sakura was breathing heavily at the end of her rant. It was obvious to Naruto that she desperately wanted to help Tenten but she couldn't think of a way to do so.

"We'll think of something," the blond comforted her, pulling the pink-haired girl to his side with an arm around her. "Come on that ANBU wants to talk to us about the extra Sasuke-chan that's hanging around next door to me."

Sakura giggled a little at Naruto's description. She was very eager to see what the ANBU medic-nin had managed to glean from the body, hopefully still living and undamaged.

-o0o- break -o0o-

They arrived at the apartment next to Naruto's at the same time as the Hokage.

"Ah, Naruto-kun, Sakura-chan, it's a good thing that you're here. I was going to send for you after hearing what our ANBU has to say about Sasuke-kun's extra body," the Sandaime said as he opened the door and gestured for the two genin to precede him.

The ANBU didn't even look up from the thick medical text she was studying against a scroll of writing. "Welcome Hokage-sama," she said as she formed a ram seal and released a technique. Naruto and Sakura watched in awe as the writing on the scroll she'd been studying slid across the paper and disappeared into a huge glowing seal that covered the floor around the gurney with the Sasuke-chan body on it. Sakura nearly rubbed her hands together at the thought of learning such complex seals that would be able to tell her the status of her patients or even possibly help her in keeping them alive. She was excited at the prospect of so much further to go in her discipline. Naruto was amazed that chakra-charged ink could do such incredible things. A few scribbles of ink should not know the difference between a human body and a rock but it was apparent that somehow it could identify the difference and even possibly tell a skilled ninja more about a human body than Naruto could.

"Are you ready to give a report Rabbit?" asked Sarutobi.

Rabbit nodded, "I am Hokage-sama. As you can see I've been testing the body as rigorously as I am capable of and I can say without any doubt that this is a fully functioning, real body. It matches perfectly what I have of Uchiha Sasuke's DNA with the obvious gender difference. I would not be able to tell this body apart from one that had been born to Uchiha Fugaku and Mikoto themselves."

The aged ninja leader nodded. "What does that mean as far as Sasuke's current body?"

"According to the reports of what happened in Training Ground 44 if his current body had been fake it would have dispersed by now. The assessment the Hospital did after Hatake-san put the Fūja Hōin on the Uchiha, showed that he was healthy as could be expected, more so actually, after a run in with Orochimaru. That they found nothing wrong with him after so close a check-up as would be necessitated suggests strongly that there is nothing wrong with that body. It's my opinion that whatever happened resulted in a perfect copy of Uchiha Sasuke in a female template." The assessment started out monotone but Naruto and Sakura noted that as the conversation went on the ANBU was starting to show more signs of life than the generally autonomous ANBU were credited with.

"A very interesting effect to be sure but I suspect you have found something else," was Sarutobi's leading comment.

"Yes," she trailed off a little, giving herself time to think about her response. "I have had to keep the body sedated." This perked up all three heads listening to the report. "It has become obvious that the body does not have a copy of Uchiha-san's personality. I had originally thought that the personality would surface given some time to adjust but this mind is totally instinctual. There are no higher level brain functions than you would expect in a small animal like a dog or cat. If you were hoping for another ready-made Uchiha genin, you are to be disappointed." This last was said with a rather wry sarcasm, as if the expectation were groundless and absurd.

"I admit that such a result might have worked in our favor," allowed the Hokage. "But, I suspect that the therapy necessary for a copy of Sasuke-kun's personality to accept that he was now female would have negated any advantages so far as to make a blank slate preferable."

Naruto chuckled at the idea of someone getting Sasuke to accept that he was now a girl and not only that but he was no longer the last loyal Uchiha, effectively having a twin. He didn't think that Sarutobi would have had one of the Yamanaka wipe the body's mind had that been the case but the blond admitted he would not have wanted that decision tossed on his lap for an all-you-can-eat, Ichiraku ramen lunch.

"What is the personality like now?" asked Sakura. "Is it like an animal in the sense that we could not even teach it to perform like a shinobi? Is it capable of learning or just keeping the body alive: eating, drinking, sleeping, etc.?"

The ANBU raised an eyebrow at this. No one could see it but they all knew that it happened behind the mask anyway. "I do not know for sure, I have not attempted to teach it anything. You have some idea of what we should do that relates to this?"

Sakura found herself the center of attention now. She blushed a little and seemed about to shrink into herself at such pointed attention. Naruto smiled at her and took her hand for reassurance and she took a breath before continuing.

"What about replacing the current personality? If the entity that is operating the body now isn't truly human and cannot become one we might be better off replacing it, at least in the interest of having a second Uchiha survivor in the village. Of course having an Uchiha is only good for the village if the village can use them in a manner that is unique to them so ideally we would switch it for a kunoichi personality."

"Tenten!" shouted Naruto. "You want to replace whatever is in there with Tenten. That was she can continue to be a ninja even though her body it broken up too badly for her to continue."

That caught the attention of both the ANBU and Sarutobi. The possibilities were very exciting. To be able to bring an experienced kunoichi, unable to continue due to injury, and put her in the body of an Uchiha would be exceptional on many levels.

Hiruzen was thinking how motivated she would be after having only narrowly escaped death. She would also not have any of the ingrained Uchiha superiority and he would not need to deal with that sort of bullshit should she ever rise to position of the head of the restored Uchiha clan. A deep irony that: the possibility of a non-Uchiha commanding the future of Uchihas within Konoha.

Rabbit was very interested in the medical possibilities. If a supply of bodies were to be found (and whatever the procedure entailed actually worked out) it might be possible for Konoha to reactivate ninja that had been forced to retire due to career-ending injuries. The wealth of experience regarding multiple battles placed into a new, strong body was a recipe for an incredibly powerful set of ninja.

After several moments of greatness flashing before their eyes, both Sarutobi and Rabbit allowed themselves to think about the possible side effects and potential problems of such a procedure. Sarutobi vividly recalled his traitor student with his twisted dreams of immortality and power. Sanctioning this might lead to a path similar to Orochimaru's horrible experiments if the procedure proved a success and were opened up to more ninja.

Rabbit's objections were much more practical: the foreign chakra that the body would attempt to reject might cause the replacement personality to be ejected at an inconvenient time; proximity to the body might affect the responsiveness of the switch; the availability of brain-dead bodies that weren't horrendously damaged getting that way to supply other ninja with new bodies; just to name several.

"I would be very wary of starting down that road Sakura-chan. First of all we have no way of knowing how successful an attempt like that would be. It may not be possible or it might turn out to be terribly impractical as a method for returning your friend to ninja duties. I admire your drive to help your friend but unless you have more than just good intentions I cannot condone the attempt." The old leader tried to be gentle in his negative but it seemed that his words just encouraged the two teens.

"What about the mind switching jutsu Ino used to put Sasuke's personality back into the male body?" asked Naruto.

"That wouldn't work," opined Rabbit. "With Uchiha-san they were both his body and he could inhabit either without issue; it was just a matter of transferring between them. With any Yamanaka they must fight the body's natural resistance to their chakra, the opposing personality (admittedly not applicable here), and there is a distance threshold where the farther away the target gets the harder it is to control. I've heard rumors that there is a slight delay between the spirit telling the body what to do and the body doing it and that it gets longer as the subject of the jutsu gets further away. At some point the Uchiha body would get far enough away from your friend, this Tenten, that the jutsu would collapse leaving the Uchiha body without guidance or drive and would leave Tenten back in her own body."

"It would still be worth looking at." Sakura stubbornly insisted. "We can't keep Sasuke-chan sedated, restrained and hidden. It's not practical nor useful in any way to us like this. From a results-only standpoint all this body can provide here is genetic material and a womb for new Uchiha babies that would immediately go up for adoption. That wouldn't get us very far though because without exercise and proper diet the body would break down very quickly and become too unhealthy to provide children." Sakura's face twisted in disgust at the idea of using a female body like some kind of baby machine.

"A good observation," continued Rabbit. "There is evidence that if the mother does not activate the Sharingan that the child will be less likely to receive or activate its own. Without an active Sharingan and with no additional source of Uchiha genes to breed her with we would have perhaps one in five of her offspring able to activate the Sharingan, optimistically. That too requires a full-time nurse or medic-nin to make sure the body stays healthy and the pregnancies go smoothly. Eventually someone would figure out the secret as well and it would open up a political can of worms we would never see the bottom of."

This silenced conversation for awhile as all the participants took the time to think of more options. It didn't even occur to either Rabbit or the Hokage that the two genin shouldn't have an equal say in what would happen. They had created this mess after all and that made it at least partially their responsibility to clean it up. That they were offering good suggestions only solidified their right to speak in the minds of their older compatriots. Eventually the Hokage spoke hesitantly, delivering his judgment.

"I do not have enough information to make a solid decision…" he paused, "I will let you continue to explore options in theory. However, you all must bring these possibilities to me before taking any steps to use them. Rabbit, you may continue to study the body in order to better understand the Uchiha. If something happens we may want some way to resurrect the clan via volunteers."

Rabbit nodded, knowing that the Hokage was giving her permission to take genetic samples, study the physiology of one of the notoriously cagy clan, and to preserve some of the female's eggs that they might fertilize them and implant them in willing civilian mothers should Sasuke and his new clone die before naturally reproducing. Naruto and Sakura looked like they found the implications unsettling but they said nothing.

"Sakura, you and Naruto may look into options for turning 'Sasuke-chan' into something more than a coma patient, but you **will** come to me and Rabbit-san before you do anything more than put the theory together for us to look at." The Sandaime finished this order such that he looked, sounded, and felt every inch the dictator of Konoha's military forces that a Hokage was supposed to be. Naruto and Sakura straightened to attention before responding in the affirmative and saluting him. Glad that they understood the severity of the order Sarutobi moved on to other subjects.

"I finally got a response from Tsunade regarding Sakura," he started. Naruto and Sakura relaxed from their rigid posture though they still paid very close attention. Rabbit's attention had been caught too. "It seems that your abilities have warranted a visit from her in order to see how you've replicated her technique and to ensure that you've done yourself no undue harm in the manner you replicated it in."

Naruto and Sakura smiled at that. Visions of training from a Sannin and her role model were dashed however.

"She still remains stubborn about permanently returning to her home. She lost two very important people and I'm ashamed to say that the losses broke her in a way that the Second Shinobi War did not. She still categorically refuses to return to her home and take up her position again. You will need to meet her at a small village outside of Konoha a week before the Chunin Exam finals. I will have more details for you when I am more sure of them myself." This said, Hiruzen turned to leave, addressing them one last time before disappearing in a Shunshin. "I'm not supposed to have favorites amongst the examinees but I look forward to your fights especially, good luck."

Naruto and Sakura's smiles were ear-to-ear. They would have to take extra effort to showcase something special for the old man who showed confidence in them.

"What exactly did you emulate of Tsunade's?" asked Rabbit, eyes examining the two genin as a scalpel might. Sakura looked at Naruto who just shrugged in response to the nonverbal question.

Sakura turned her attention back to the ANBU kunoichi before walking over and lifting the entire gurney using a single finger and some chakra to make it stick. Again the genin felt that if they could see her face the older kunoichi would have an eyebrow raised.

"I found a way to copy her strength, or at least I think I did. I might not look it, but I can put craters in bedrock with my punches and kicks," elaborated the pinkette. "It's not going to be much of a secret at the end of the month 'cause I'll probably use it in my fight but I would appreciate it if you would keep that to yourself until I can surprise that sand psycho."

Rabbit nodded and looked like she wanted to ask some questions about it but after a slight pause where she might have she just turned back to her research on her seal's anatomy results. Sakura turned to Naruto and shrugged before they both left to pursue their own avenues of interest.

-o0o- break -o0o-

The first order of business they decided after leaving the ANBU alone with Sasuke-chan was to find Kakashi and figure out what he had planned for their training. Naruto, perhaps uncharitably, thought that the masked man would not have anything lined up for them but Sakura thought that he would have set up something if only to save his reputation.

It turned out that Sakura was the more correct of the two. She didn't quite have it pegged because Kakashi didn't give two shits what most people thought of him. He actually arranged tutors for them because he honestly wanted them to succeed he just wanted them to succeed without his having to put effort into their preparations. He was lazy and a poor teacher, not malicious.

For Sakura he'd managed to convince a tokubetsu jonin named Yamashiro Aoba. Kakashi had assured Sakura that Aoba knew a great deal to teach her and would be able to get her ready for the finals in a month. It didn't take long to figure out that Aoba was mostly concerned with teaching Sakura enough techniques to get away from Gaara rather than to fight him. He'd outlined his plan to teach her Shunshin which Naruto had already taught her, a ninjutsu for distracting opponents allowing her to attack unimpeded, a technique for using her chakra to paralyze her opponent, and to work on her basics and fitness.

Naruto found himself in the company of Ebisu. A tokubetsu jonin whose claim to fame was as an elite tutor with a reputation for obsessively drilling his students in the basics. Naruto knew him from his training of Konohamaru, the Hokage's grandson, and from a little known list of ridiculous feats that the mission office liked to keep and add to. Ebisu's place was secured by being the only person since they started checking (the latter part of the Shodaime's reign) to have completed an A-rank mission using only kawarimi, bunshin, and henge. This constituted the highest ranked mission ever completed with naught but the academy three. Kakashi thought that because Naruto had been the dead-last he needed a refresher on his basics and who better to do that than the man who ran jonin-level missions using only those skills. Before Naruto had found that record he would have been insulted beyond words, he imagined he would have found some anyway, but after seeing that he was quite curious about the creative ways the man must have found for the most basic jutsu.

In the meantime, they learned, Kakashi would be personally training Sasuke. He would be taking him out to a remote training field and spending the entire month out there. Naruto seethed with jealousy that Sasuke would be learning so much. Sakura was more practical… after all, how good could the training be coming from someone with minimal people skills going to another with almost no people skills. There was bound to be some communication problems and she imagined that Sasuke would learn a great deal less than Naruto and Sakura despite the disparity between their respective teachers' reputations.

After setting a time to meet with their temporary senseis, Naruto and Sakura took their leave. Naruto went to look up ways to boost or support the connection between Tenten and Sasuke-chan. Sakura went to talk to Ino; she needed to get a better picture of what was actually happening during the mind switch. If she knew better how it was done she had no doubt that there would be a way to tweak it to be more permanent or work better for the situation. When the Yamanaka's designed the jutsu they wanted to return the minds to the original bodies, Sakura thought that by taking that option away they could come up with a much stronger connection between the minds.

-o0o- break -o0o-

It was fifteen days later that Naruto and Sakura made a breakthrough. Separately their options didn't really fit the bill. Sakura fiddled with the theory of the connection between minds and did find a couple ways to make it stronger but nothing permanent. Ino actually appreciated being let in on that part of the project as it significantly improved her understanding of her family's jutsu which in turn allowed her to learn more after displaying the requisite mastery of the ones she already could use. Sakura kept getting defeated by distance. She could force the jutsu, in theory, to completely meld with the target mind. She could modify the jutsu so that even third-party dispelling techniques were ineffective. She could _not_ get the jutsu to work as designed from further than a hundred meters away. Indeed, the more she strengthened the jutsu's effects the shorter the tether became. Partial tests done by Ino with animals and her teammates (they volunteered) bore out Sakura's theories but also confirmed the additional weaknesses.

Naruto couldn't do anything with the switching jutsu itself. He did find some ways to condition the body to better accept the new spirit. Some very minor chakra seals he'd worked out with Rabbit would allow Tenten's chakra to suffuse the body and to fill the atrophied chakra network. The personality currently inhabiting the body was incapable of using chakra and so even without it being sedated it would have allowed the chakra to fall out of use. This would have the side effect of conditioning the body to accept Tenten's chakra making the transfer easier. As soon as they figured out a way to make the transfer and convince the Sandaime of their method they would start slapping seals filled with Tenten's chakra all over the body.

The solution eventually came to them when they were outlining their individual progress. It occurred to Naruto that their methods could be complementary. They needn't do it just one way or the other. Still they were stuck on the distance. Eventually Naruto jokingly suggested that Tenten strap her old body to her new body's back and go into the fights and missions like that.

That sparked Sakura's suggestion that they use a very difficult and esoteric medic-nin's seal that they used to store live, injured shinobi in scrolls. The seal was designed to work on a live body which was very different than a dead one or any other inanimate object. All seals manipulated spiritual energy as a component of the chakra fueling them when they worked; so the reason that one couldn't seal a live body into a regular storage scroll was that the spirit of the person being sealed interfered with the spiritual energy component of the chakra used by the medic-nin and manipulated by the seal. Eventually Tsunade had found a way around that limitation. By putting the physical body into stasis, partially separating the spirit from the body, sealing the physical body, and maintaining a tethered connection between the spirit and the seal where upon opening the spirit would reconnect to the body; a medic-nin could now seal a ninja on death's doorstep in the field and then save their life later when they had replenished their reserves of chakra and had a full hospital of equipment. With the body in stasis, it would not die when the spirit was partially disconnected; with the spirit remaining outside the pocket dimension the body went into, the energies wouldn't clash and cause the seal to fail.

This had the beneficial, to Naruto and Sakura, side-effect of keeping the sealed shinobi conscious of what was happening around the seal he or she was inside. This was rather disconcerting to most recipients of this technique and was often described as a prolonged out-of-body experience. A rather horrible feeling for a ninja to be aware and completely helpless at the same time. This helped Naruto and Sakura as they actually needed Tenten to remain conscious while her body was sealed in order to maintain control over the new body.

If they sealed Tenten's body into one of these seals and then had the spirit linked up to the Sasuke-chan body there was no way for the transfer jutsu to be interrupted besides unsealing the original body or killing the Sasuke-chan body. By keeping the scroll on hand the distance would never be an issue.

Naruto, excited by the prospect, then refined it further. Why not tattoo the seal for Tenten's original body directly on the Sasuke-chan body? There would never be an accident with a scroll that way and if placed in the right way, by the time someone was able to damage the seal the Sasuke-chan body would be fatally wounded which would minimize lucky shots that might not damage Sasuke-chan but totally destroy the scroll and thus Tenten. If the seal were designed well, they might even be able to use Tenten's body like a chakra battery like Naruto could use the Kyuubi in an emergency. Tenten wouldn't want to make a habit of it as accidentally killing her sealed body from chakra exhaustion would effectively kill her in her new body. Naruto was even optimistic that they might be able to tether the spirit directly from the seal into the new body avoiding possible problems with the modified Yamanaka jutsu.

-o0o-

Presenting their ideas to Rabbit and the Sandaime went rather well. It turned out that Rabbit had the necessary sealing knowledge to look into the modifications of the medical body-storage seal. As soon as Sarutobi gave the go-ahead for the seal modifications and the experiment, all three full-time conspirators got to work.

Sakura briefed Ino on what had happened and what her role would be in this. She would also be responsible for explaining the whole thing to Tenten after Rabbit would give the brunet the option to make the switch. While Rabbit was necessary to keep up the image of sanctioned, legitimate procedure, Sakura was better able to explain what would happen in terms that Tenten would understand.

Naruto worked out a dozen of the chakra preparation seals and he rotated them out. A half-dozen were collecting excess chakra from Tenten; the other half-dozen were forcing what they'd collected earlier to run through the Sasuke-chan body. Again this was explained as part of the preparation process to Tenten by Sakura. Naruto could have explained it sufficiently, given Tenten's lack of specific knowledge and the decision to leave out unnecessary details, but it would not have been received as well coming from someone Tenten knew to be an idiot with regards to bookwork.

Rabbit meanwhile, was very busy modifying the seal to work in the way they had come up with. She found that she could get the seal to pull chakra from Tenten's body in an emergency but she thought that connecting the spirit directly from the seal to the other body would cause the spirit to totally separate and Tenten would then die instantly as her spirit would be pulled from the mortal plane. Understandably concerned over that possibility it was unanimous between Rabbit, Sakura, and Naruto that they would bring in Ino to perform the switching jutsu.

With so many things that could possibly make the whole operation go wrong it was probably for the best that they left at least some parts as proven techniques.

-o0o-

Tenten was excited, nervous, apprehensive, giddy, scared, and a whole host of other conflicting emotions. She'd been selected for an experimental procedure. As it had been explained to her, she would switch out her spirit from her damaged body into an undamaged body that was brain-dead. The body was apparently in some way important, which was the reason that they would be doing the switch in the first place. She had been chosen because the body was of a similar age, was a kunoichi, and (if she were cynically honest to herself) she was somewhat more expendable than a less injured but better, more experienced kunoichi. She had some idea about the possible implications of such a transfer – putting old ninja into young bodies being the foremost – so in that sense she, as a very novice ninja, wasn't the best transfer choice unless they were worried about the procedure going wrong somehow.

Still, it was a chance to be a ninja again and she would gladly risk her life for that. She was amazed and somewhat humbled that a genin a year younger than her had explained the procedure and was by all appearances part of the operation. To be so young and already so highly thought of only increased her drive to become a better kunoichi as soon as she had a body that was 100% again.

In order to do the transfer they had spent the last several days siphoning chakra from her with paper seals and using them somehow to prepare the other body to receive her chakra. She'd heard from the pink-haired medic-nin that they were going to accustom the body to her chakra so that it didn't reject the transfer and she would be able to take control immediately. Some other preparations had been made she was sure and now it was the day of the switch.

In preparation for the switch she had been moved last night to another location inside Konoha. They'd allowed her to speak to her team beforehand and had recommended that she say anything she felt she needed to say to them then. It had seemed like a very harsh thing to say to someone you were attempting to cure but she remembered the explanation…

_-Flashback-_

_The ANBU and the pink-haired medic-nin, Sakura she thought her name was, entered her room shortly after the duty nurse had left with the remains of Tenten's breakfast. She looked up at the two kunoichi that had claimed to be able to give her dreams back to her. The brunette could see that today would be a very serious discussion, like the last discussion hadn't been, but she prepared to give her full attention to her would-be saviors._

"_We will begin the operation tomorrow morning and as such we will move you to a different location tonight. The entire affair will be beyond top-secret so you will not be able to see your team after we move you and they will not be allowed to know where you are until the procedure has been deemed a success or failure," the ANBU began without any preemptive small talk. "If you have anything to say to your team, today would be the time to say it, you may not get another chance. I will be back at 7p with the rest of the team doing the operation to move you to the new location. If you have any questions or last concerns please address them to Sakura-san in my absence."_

_A slight sound and the ANBU appeared to blur and disappear as she left. Tenten was left speechless. That was possibly the most callous thing she'd ever heard from anyone before. Doctors were supposed to be optimistic weren't they? Did this mean they thought she would die? Medics were supposed to know that keeping the patient's spirits up improved their chances!_

"_She didn't mean to scare you," Sakura jumped in, seeing that Tenten was working herself into a panic. "She's been in ANBU a long time and she's forgotten how to interact with people who aren't ANBU." Tenten looked up to see a slight reassuring smile on the pinkette's face. "In ANBU there is a very high mortality rate due to the difficulty of the missions they get sent on. She doesn't want you to have regrets or to cause your teammates anguish if something does go wrong. She's probably known too many people who left an argument they were having with their comrades and went on a mission they didn't come back from."_

_Tenten thought over this notion while Sakura gave her a little time to absorb it before continuing: "But let's not talk about depressing stuff! I've already sent messages to your team and your sensei; I know they would want to hear about your operation from you. You can't tell them what exactly is going to happen but you can say that you're having an experimental operation and that you'll be out of contact for a bit. Gai-sensei might be briefed a little more on what's going on but that's up to Hokage-sama so you shouldn't say anything even to him."_

"_What about what she said?" the brunette asked. Sakura looked confused so Tenten elaborated. "Is there really a good chance that I'll die from this?"_

"_Oh," exclaimed Sakura, her eyes shooting wide open. "No, it's not as bad as she made it sound. She was referring to the tests we'll have to do after you get transferred over. We need to make sure it worked, of course, and to see if there are any limits or ways enemy ninja might exploit or disrupt the technique. We aren't going to just check that you're in command of the new body and send you off without checking to see if a simple genjutsu release technique will break the transfer!" she joked._

"_But there is a chance that I might die." That sobered Sakura up quickly. She looked very serious before answering and Tenten got a shiver down her spine at the power the look conveyed._

"_Yes, there is, but you knew that before you agreed to the procedure. I remember telling you yesterday the possible consequences of this. As far as we know, conservatively this has a 30% chance of working without any problems, a 50% chance of working with some unforeseen complications like being dispelled by an outside source or some such, a 10% chance of rejecting the transfer entirely with little or no harm to you, and, as I explained yesterday, a 10% chance that you could die from this." Sakura paused again to let this sink in before her smile crept back onto her face. "It's actually much better chances than some conventional surgery and I suspect that in most of the cases where there is an unforeseen problem we would be able to reverse the procedure with no harm to your current body. However… if you are having second thoughts about this you should speak up now because once you are moved tonight you won't get the chance to back out."_

_Tenten seemed to relax after that. "No I'm not having second thoughts it was just the way she said I should speak to my team like I was already dead that spooked me. I thought she meant that she didn't think the procedure was going to go well and that I wouldn't make it so I should tell my team goodbye."_

"_Ah, she does tend to be rather abrupt I suppose but you get used to it. You might not want to say goodbye outright but you should talk to your team and let them know you're going to be gone for awhile. This could take months if something doesn't seem right and while I'll be there to help you out it is Rabbit-sempai's decision as to when the testing is done and when you can see your team and explain. I'd certainly take this time to say things to the people I care for if I knew I was probably going to be away for weeks," suggested Sakura._

_It was about this point that Lee and Gai had burst through the door in a synchronized flying kick screaming about youth, springtime, and burning fires._

_-End Flashback-_

Tenten had just finished recalling the rather emotional farewell and well-wishing that her team had given her when the door to the rather Spartan room she was in opened to show the ANBU who would be presiding over the operation.

"We will begin now," was all she had to say as a greeting. "You will need to be nude for the sealing work to be done. I will need to ink symbols on bare skin and it is best that we minimize the number of things that could interfere with the process. As my assistant, Sakura-san, keeps reminding me, not everyone is ANBU or former-ANBU and she thought you might like a warning that there will be several people helping with the procedure who will see you nude. They have offered to cover their faces with doctor's masks to make you more comfortable if that helps but they are necessary to the process and will need to remain as well as be unimpeded."

Tenten blushed and swallowed nervously. She didn't want someone looking at her nude. She was uncomfortable enough when the medic-nin had to remove clothing but to be in a room with several people who would all see her in the altogether, it was horrifying. She wasn't sure what the mask offer was about unless it was to make it more like they were all doctors if she were more comfortable with the professionalism represented by the pale green masks. The problem was that she was no more comfortable with doctors seeing her naked than anyone else. Still, it wasn't like she had another option.

"They don't need to wear any masks if they weren't already, but please thank them for attempting to make this more comfortable… and thank you for giving me the option," she responded at last. The ANBU nodded to her before she drew the covers back off the gurney Tenten was on.

"If you can, please remove the hospital gown," the masked kunoichi said as she turned and took an ink pot and brush from the table beside her.

Tenten struggled a little with the gown, her injuries still bothered her and she'd had strict orders to not move around much until the healing solidified and her own body took over. Rabbit turned back to the genin and waited a moment until the brunette managed to shed that paper-like barrier. She attempted to cover herself with her arms but managed to leave them lying at her sides when she was interrupted by a slight clearing of the throat.

It didn't take more than a minute to have the symbols drawn over her body. She thought she recognized the same seal for pulling chakra from her painted over where the chakras were supposed to lie in Hindu teachings. A much more complex seal linked them all together and spread across most of her stomach. Small seals, barely a handful of lines and swirls that seemed meaningless to her, coming from just a little knowledge of sealing scrolls as she did, were inked on her arms, legs, hands, feet, back, shoulders, and head. Rabbit put her brush and the ink down before she made several seals and began touching each seal over her chakras while holding the final handseal. At each place the older kunoichi touched, Tenten could feel a slight draw on her chakra like when she pushed chakra into her sealing scrolls to unseal a weapon. It wasn't much chakra at each seal but seven seals all working at once was more than she would put into a dozen bunshin.

This part done, the ANBU slid her arms under Tenten and lifted her from the gurney and carried her into the room she'd entered from.

Tenten looked around as she entered the room and noticed Sakura standing next to a nude kunoichi who was lying down in the middle of a large, inactive seal array. The body, she assumed the one she would soon inhabit, was about the same height as her with black hair that reached her shoulders, very pale skin, and a lithe almost skinny build that she imagined would be very fast but incredibly weak. She assumed that the build was due to the muscles atrophying from long term disuse but she didn't think it would take too long to rehabilitate.

She took her eyes from the body and the pink-haired genin that was preparing it to look at the rest of the room. There was a blonde kunoichi sitting in a chair between the two seal arrays on the floor idly running through handseals. Although Tenten didn't know who this was she recognized that this was the rookie Yamanaka she'd seen at that start of the Chunin Exams. She was shocked that the girl would be helping with this operation but she did recognize that transferring consciousnesses would be something a Yamanaka would be uniquely suited to. She did worry a little at how many genin seemed to be involved and it was only the presence of the ANBU carrying her and the professional way that Sakura had explained the procedure that kept her from getting worried.

The second array that was drawn on the floor was where the ANBU set her down. Again she produced a brush and more ink after turning around for a moment. Now the symbols that had looked mere scribbles along her body were being connected to the seal on the ground. As Rabbit was finishing up her sealing, Tenten took the time to finish her perusal of the room. There wasn't much around although she imagined that it had just been moved in preparation for the sealing. The room was basically white and had the air of being recently remodeled or renovated: the paint looked new, the floor still smelt of sawdust and chemicals from when they resurfaced it recently. There weren't any windows but there were three doors, one per wall with one wall blank. She didn't know where they led but she imagined that she would find out in the coming days.

She was so caught up in her observance of the room she nearly missed the second blond that had just entered the room. She recognized him as Naruto, Sakura's teammate, and she felt herself light up in a furious blush – there was a boy in here! It was bad enough that she had to bare herself to all these other women but to have a male in here with them was inexcusable. She nearly let him have a piece of her mind when she was interrupted before she could start.

"Are you ready for me yet?" he asked, directing his question to the still painting ANBU operative.

"Nearly so, take Ino's chair out of here while you're waiting. She can lie down on the floor if she thinks this is going to make her lose control of her body. I want as few unnecessary things in here as possible," replied Rabbit. Naruto chuckled at that even as he grabbed Ino's chair once she stood up, still doing handseals.

"I'm surprised you haven't made us all strip to the skin if you're so worried about it." Naruto laughed. The ANBU actually seemed to think about this for a moment before she spoke when Naruto returned.

"I would order that but I think that would be the cause for more distractions rather than less."

Naruto laughed again as Ino and Sakura giggled a little; Tenten was appalled.

-o0o-

Naruto was antsy. He wanted to be doing something but he knew that his presence wouldn't be appreciated by anyone just yet. Ino was concentrating on the jutsu she would be using as well as the modifications she would be making. Sakura was checking up on the Sasuke-chan body to make sure everything was fine before the transfer: checking chakra levels, general health, and other last minute checks. He had nothing to materially contribute to the sealing efforts that Rabbit couldn't handle much better so he really had no reason to be in the room until they needed him.

He was trying to make Tenten comfortable. He knew she would be nervous about the procedure and he didn't want to make that worse by hanging around doing nothing other than ogling her body and making her nervous about the dead-last being involved in a very complex medical operation.

All he really needed to do was function as a chakra battery, powering the arrays that would seal Tenten's body into a tattoo on the base of the Sasuke-chan body's head. It would probably be better for all involved if he stayed out of the room until they called for him.

That resolution didn't last long.

He opened the door quietly and looked around at the progress. He could see the moment that Tenten noticed him in the room and he felt a little bad about the embarrassment that was easy to read on her face.

He laughed and joked a little with Rabbit-sempai about everybody needing to take their clothes off, trying to make Tenten relax a little. He was very glad when they were ready to start, anything to stop this awkwardness of looking everywhere in the room except at Tenten.

"Naruto-san, you will begin to power the arrays as we've been over. Ino-san, when you see both arrays fully aglow you may begin your transference jutsu. Sakura-san, you will wait out of the way until the process is complete then you will need to check and recheck the status of the Uchiha body, while I confirm the success or failure of the sealing."

-o0o-

Tenten nearly sighed in relief when the ANBU kunoichi outlined again what the roles of every member would be. She only held it in by desperately not wanting Naruto to know how relieved she was at his not being a complex part of the technique. She really didn't want to insult one of the people who would have her life in their hands in just moments. As unjust as it was to insult someone whose very presence indicated that the elite kunoichi in charge trusted him, she still had the impression in her mind of the genin she used to go to class with wearing orange and failing at everything he did.

Everyone took their places. Naruto was at her feet and off to her left allowing him to touch both arrays while kneeling in a seiza position between them. Ino took an almost identical position across from him putting the female blonde next to her head almost, but not quite, within reaching distance of both bodies' foreheads. Sakura had retreated out of the way until she stood, back to the wall, on the opposite side of the extra body (_an Uchiha body_, she thought to herself) from where she was lying. Finally the ANBU took up a position kneeling behind Naruto and reaching out to touch both seals herself in order to stabilize them from any fluctuations that might come from Naruto's control.

"Alright Naruto, you may begin," said the ANBU quietly.

Suddenly the world exploded in chakra and the very air warped and pressed Tenten firmly to the floor. Panicking, her eyes darted around to the others in the room but for all the massive amount of chakra being thrown around it didn't seem to bother anyone but her. She desperately gasped for breath that she couldn't seem to get. She saw the total calm of Sakura standing by the wall, waiting patiently until the technique was completed. Ino only showed some slight beads of sweat on her brow to indicate that she even felt the same crushing presence Tenten felt swamped by.

The brunette noticed the blonde Yamanaka begin a chain of handseals as her vision tunneled in, the black consumed her and she knew no more.

-o0o- break -o0o-

Tenten's eyes cracked open and instantly were rewarded by a painful stab of light.

She groaned in pain. She hadn't felt this bad since the time her team had first found out that Lee was a natural drunken fist master, the beating and accompanying hangover the next day were possibly the worst things she'd ever felt.

This might actually top that.

She had a headache. Her body felt sluggish and weak. She felt disconnected from her limbs and all her body parts felt like there was something slightly off about them.

Then her memory of before she blacked out came rushing back full force.

She tried to scream and sit up but her body wouldn't respond to her commands right. She ended up jerking around like someone had just slapped her in the stomach.

"She's awake now, Rabbit-sempai," she heard someone say. She thought it might have been Sakura but she didn't know. She was still so confused. Hands pushed her back to lie on her back and stretched out. She felt the telltale tingling of medical chakra being run across her body; probably a diagnostic.

She finally forced her eyes open to see what was going on.

She was in a different room than the one they did the sealing in. She could see only two doors and one looked to be a closet door. She was lying on a real bed but she thought that it was medical sheets based on the feeling against her skin. She was no longer naked but they had put her back into a hospital-style gown that opened in the back and she could tell that they had neglected to tie the back closed.

She was being attended by Sakura and Rabbit-san though it had been Rabbit-san's medical jutsu that she had felt. When she saw there wasn't anyone else in the room and she couldn't feel the oppressing chakra that had weighed her down during the technique she finally relaxed and allowed the two kunoichi to poke, prod, and fuss over her.

Before she could even begin to ask questions about her status Sakura started explaining.

"Well, you'll no doubt be happy to hear that as far as we can tell the operation was a total success. We were a little worried when you first transferred over and freaked out a little but I imagine that the transition was very startling. We're sorry we didn't warn you about the chakra pressure, we were so caught up in doing our own parts that it entirely slipped our minds. Naruto has a massive amount of chakra but Ino and I are used to it and Rabbit-san has experienced it before so we didn't think there would be a problem…" as Sakura continued to apologize and explain the huge chakra presence as Naruto, Tenten was remembering flashes of memory.

Apparently she had woken up right after the transfer and reacted badly to the amount of chakra in the air by trying to run away and attacking everyone in her way at the time. She didn't remember it all but there were flashes of vision in her head: facing Sakura's astonished eyes, dodging around Ino as she tried to block the door, a muscled forearm suddenly in her vision and a brief sensation of surprise and pain. She imagined that was from when they had to resort to force to restrain her as Sakura was also explaining and apologizing for.

"…caught you and had to knock you out again. You've been out for two days since." Sakura finished. Tenten could only look at her blankly as Rabbit continued to use medical diagnostic jutsu to check her out.

Finally Tenten broke off the starring to look down at herself. She was shocked to find herself in a very different body. She knew that she was going to end up in one but it was very jarring to see such pale skin and delicate arms in place of her own familiar tanned, calloused, and muscular limbs. Her hands, almost against her better judgment, swept the sheet covering her aside so she could see herself better. Her legs were just as pale and petite as her arms. Her first thought, damn her sensei, was that it would take a lot of hard work to get back into shape, but her ninja mindset soon fell away to be replaced by the orphan girl who'd always thought herself a little too plain. She admired the color of her new skin, very classically beautiful and if she remembered correctly her face was the same regal beauty she might have expected in a daimyo's wife or daughters or even geisha.

Her hands rose to her face and she fluttered her fingertips across flawlessly smooth and soft skin before drawing a lock of hair into her view. It had been pulled back and braided by someone to keep it from disturbing her rest if she moved too much. The hair was jet black and seemed to drink the light in neither reflecting blue like a raven's wing nor showing brown highlights, just a single uniform glossy jet black.

She sighed and let her hands drop back into her lap as she attempted to get used to this. It was a lot to wrap her head around and she knew that there would be a great deal more that she would need to know and be shocked by before she was done. She settled in for a long talk and used her body language to indicate she was ready to listen.

-o0o- break -o0o-

Sarutobi Hiruzen was irritated. He liked to think that he was an even-tempered man but it seemed that his students had mastered the art of making him angry. He reflected that it should have been his first clue that Orochimaru was going bad when he had been much less irritating after Sarutobi had named Minato as his successor.

In this instance both of his still loyal, and he used that term very loosely in regards to the blonde, students were targets of his ire.

Jiraiya was in town somewhere peeking on women and totally ignoring any and all efforts Sarutobi was making about using him to prepare for what was coming. It was irresponsible, and more worrisome was the feeling that the aging Hokage was getting that he would need his most powerful student by his side for this. This was irritating but he'd already put and ANBU seduction specialist on the case. She might not be much help in preparing for the imminent conflict given her specialty but she was perfect as a messenger and a lure to his perverted student.

It was his other "loyal" student that was making him loose his cool. She was nowhere to be found and she'd not sent another message to let him know what her plans were. He was inches away from showing up to the meeting alone and taking her to task before he'd let her around his genin. In fact, he thought that was a grand idea and he created several shadow and mud clones to take his place in the office while he went to look for her.

She was nearly a week late. Sarutobi had caught the studied insult in it and he would tolerate her behavior no more.

-o0o- break -o0o-

Sakura, Naruto, and Ino were meeting for the last time before the exams started tomorrow. They were all going to arrive separately; Ino with her parents, Sakura would leave hers in the stands, and Naruto would be waiting in the arena before anyone except the security duty was there.

Ino had just finished handing out the last little bit of relevant information on their possible opponents. There had been a few last minute additions to the techniques they might be facing. They were all excited to finally show their stuff, unhidden and unvarnished. If they didn't make chunin rank it could only be by the most base disfavor or heinous bad circumstances.

Ino, as was her custom, gave Naruto a scorching kiss while nearly dry-humping him before abruptly breaking away and slinking off in the most sensuous manner she could. Naruto's eyes nearly glowed with restrained lust as he watched and struggled to calm his breathing.

Sakura slid into his embrace turning away from the retreating blonde to snuggle into Naruto's chest.

"It's been awhile since we've had some time to ourselves like this," started Naruto as he caressed Sakura's back slowly. She nodded into his chest and turned into him until she was fully embracing him.

"It has," she agreed. "Do you want me to stay tonight?"

Sakura could have nearly kicked herself. She didn't want to sound desperate. She was a kunoichi for goodness sake. She stopped her recriminations however when she heard Naruto's appreciative noises and felt his arms tighten around her.

"I would very much like that but I don't want to get you in trouble. I'd like you to stay every night but I know you can't." Naruto seemed wistful and Sakura felt her heart get tight as if it were trying to reach out to him and hold him. Sakura knew she cared deeply for this man who beneath the confidence and the power and the sex, wanted to be accepted and loved.

They moved back into Naruto's apartment where they had been conferring, somehow not letting the other out of their embrace. They made their way directly but without any haste to Naruto's bedroom. They didn't attack each other there, though they certainly might have. It was rather domestic in a way that ninja were very seldom involved in.

Almost like a long-time couple they undressed and got ready for bed. Sakura using the extra toothbrush and toothpaste she'd begun to keep here when she and Ino had started using Naruto's apartment as a place to meet up before and after personal training.

They got into bed and pulled the sheets up to cover themselves as Naruto spooned in behind Sakura. They just lay there for a moment enjoying each other's companionship. This was in some ways more enjoyable for them both than the wild sex they'd been having off and on over the month of training. To lay here and simply be there in the other's arms was peaceful and relaxing; refreshing in a way that a full night's rest and a shower were insufficient to provide them with. They'd come to love these moments of togetherness that they were able to have.

Naruto knew that if any of his male friends or any male near his age heard of him doing this he would never hear the end of the ribbing. Still, just holding Sakura was one of his favorite pastimes.

Much like two people of different genders cannot remain platonic friends once they get close enough, Naruto and Sakura could not lie together naked in a bed and just lie there for too long.

It started with some slight shifting. Sakura shifted her leg and scooted back to accommodate Naruto's reaction to her nudity. Naruto tensed and pressed his hips firmly against Sakura's ass in response to her shifting.

-o0o-

Suddenly Sakura found herself rolled forward on her front with Naruto following her over to press her down into the mattress. Her peaceful smile turned into a smirk and she pulled her legs up under her as she ground her bare ass back into Naruto.

She heard him growl and her smirk widened. She loved it when she could get him to lose control.

She felt his arms encircle her as his hands gravitated to her breasts. His right hand cupped her left breast and he began rolling her nipple between his index finger and thumb. His firm grip was enough to excite her without being painful and she shivered in lust.

The claws on his left hand gently scraped down her front leaving trails of goose bumps. He had the power to slice effortlessly through her skin but he was always careful with her. The thought of his care turned her on still further and she was already wet by the time his fingertips came dancing over the lips of her slit.

She shuddered as she felt Naruto's erection slide between her legs and along her cleft. She felt his weight settle over her harder as he ground down into her, so close to losing control but determined to make sure she was ready first.

-o0o-

Naruto inhaled deeply and his head spun from the heady scent of Sakura's arousal. The potent musk overlaid her natural scent of earth and life. The scent called to him to let go and just take her but he would never _just_ fuck Sakura-chan. She'd become too important to him since the days when she actually started getting to know him.

His left hand finally reached its destination and he grinned as he felt the slickness that was already seeping from the slightly parted lips of her sex. He couldn't help himself and he ground into her again.

His fingers slid up and down the slit for a moment, spreading the slickness that was increasing by the second. Suddenly without the slightest warning he dipped his middle finger into her, hooking it as he drew it out slowly. The palm of his hand pressed firmly into her mound and he ground the heel of his palm into her clit.

"Gahh!" she squeaked. "Please, don't tease Naruto! I'm ready, just fuck me!"

Naruto pinched the nipple still captured in his right hand harder and twisted slightly. He'd tease her if he liked, but she was ready and his dick ached for his favorite home.

-o0o-

Sakura begged for it. She wasn't ashamed of that. She loved the sounds Naruto would make when she did. Such a pleased sounding grunt, it was almost a chuckling purr, which he would use when he realized that he was in charge.

She squealed again as he twisted her nipple and she felt a rush of more fluid in her pussy. Oh she was so ready for him.

With a sucking sound his fingers withdrew from where they were pistoning in and out of her sex.

"No," she let out a disappointed sigh and she arched her back whilst pressing backwards into him. She felt his hand leave her breast and press her down firmly into the pillows. His fingers slid into her hair and he tangled the strands up into his fist to get a good grip.

She felt something press against her dripping hole and she screamed in ecstasy when Naruto pulled back on her hair and slammed his whole length into her.

-o0o-

Naruto grunted as he set a fast pace. Sakura's scream had turned into a keening moan and she grunted every time he bottomed out inside her. The wet slapping noises his hips made every time they contacted her ass and thighs played a counterpoint harmony with the headboard knocking into the wall.

Sakura's pussy felt perfect around him. It fluttered and griped his tool as he slid in and out. She was so tight but the juices she secreted made it easy to pound into her at a furious rate.

He pulled her up by his grip on her hair into a kneeling position, slightly bent forward. He could see the sides of her breasts as they jumped up and down in time with his thrusts. He watched her hands scrabble for purchase on whatever was in reach but whenever they got close to something he would tug on her hair and pull her back to him.

His left hand that had been gripping her hip for purchase slid down once more to fondle her swollen pearl. Her keening moan turned into a wail and he felt her sex clamp down like a vice on him.

-o0o-

Sakura embraced her climax with abandon. Her hands flew to her breasts kneading them roughly to prolong the feeling. She could feel Naruto still thrusting deeper into her and her hyper sensitive body was caught in a spasm as his fingers brushed over her clit once again.

She felt him let go of her hair and she didn't resist falling face down into the pillows.

Naruto's calloused hands grabbed her left leg and lifted it over his while he straddled her right leg. She spun on her side and looked up at him as he began to thrust into her from this new position.

He was hitting different parts of her now and she could feel her tapering orgasm begin to build again.

-o0o-

Naruto gasped at the beautiful, wanton picture Sakura made. She was twisted around with her shoulders flat on the bed as he pumped into her. Her pink hair was sprawled all over the pillows underneath her head and her heaving breasts were magnificent. Her eyes were clouded with lust for him and his cock jerked and the pure desire he saw in them. Her arms were raised artfully over her head and braced against the headboard to push back into his thrusts.

She bit her lip as she moaned again and when her sex tightened as she orgasmed again. He could hold on no longer, spilling himself in jerking thrusts deep into her womb.

-o0o-

With a little repositioning Sakura rested on top of Naruto's chest. She idly drew patterns with her fingertip across his chest. She wiggled against him to make sure his dick was still inside her and she clenched her muscles to message him enough that he wouldn't go soft.

Naruto was slowly running his fingers through her hair and if she weren't careful she would soon be relaxed enough to fall asleep on top of him.

She smiled as Naruto captured her wrist and lifted it to his lips. He started kissing her wrist, moving on to her palm before he sucked her fingers one at a time into his mouth, gently laving them with his tongue.

She pushed herself upright and settled herself on him, straddling his hips with his cock deep inside of her. Slowly she started grinding down on him and rising up just a couple of inches and repeating it. The slow pace and minimal movement she knew would drive him wild with pent up desire.

She loved how he would let her do this with him; voluntarily let her have control by being on top of him and not trying to change the pace. She started rotating her hips around in small circles as she slowly pumped him with her pussy.

-o0o-

Naruto groaned as he felt Sakura begin to stir his dick around in her pussy. He fought to restrain himself from just grabbing her hips and pounding her up and down on him but he stopped himself from taking control. This was his way of telling her he trusted her beyond anyone else. She alone could see him with his guard down. He knew it was incredibly arousing for her to see him like this and she always had intense orgasms with barely any stimulation like this.

His hands, fed up with no action, drifted up Sakura's legs and began stroking them gently. They glided from her knees over the tops of her legs before running off the sides around until he ended to stroke fingers splayed on her ass. He felt Sakura shudder through a mini-orgasm and she began picking up her pace.

Naruto grunted and moaned as Sakura started going faster and faster until the staccato of slaps of their hips meeting grew loud enough and fast enough to cover their moans.

Naruto could already feel his orgasm coming up on him and he barely had time to warn Sakura.

"Sakura, I'm cuming," he gasped just loud enough to be heard.

"Do it," she responded. "Fill me up with your seed. Make me leak your cream all night."

He couldn't take it anymore, the hot, wet pressure along his dick along with the dirty talk from Sakura broke his control, and he shot his cum deep into her setting off her own orgasm.

Naruto grunted as Sakura collapse onto his chest once more and they kissed lingeringly before both their eyes slid shut and they drifted off.

* * *

AN: It has become very obvious to most of you who follow this story that as soon as I give you an approximate time to expect the next chapter that I have just lied to you. So, in the spirit of honesty I'm not going to tell you when I think the next chapter will be done. There is nothing written down though so make of that what you will.

I hope you enjoy the lemon at the end, I thought that I'd try something more emotionally involved than just fucking. I'll leave it to you the judges about whether I succeeded or not. As you have presumably just read you now know where I was going with a fem-Sasuke clone. I thought it would be interesting to do a riff on Orochimaru's body-switching jutsu. I figure that I'm cutting him off at the knees everywhere else I might as well have some genin accidentally steal some of his techniques.

Next chapter: chunin exam final round fights


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